Live data in your OpenOffice.org Impress slideshow presentations

Are you presenting in conferences graphical charts and figures which continuously change and you have no time to update the slides? All you need is your OpenOffice.org Impress presentation and an active Internet connection to show your audience the live figures your team or your server assembles for you back at home. The data is fed up into your slideshow as you speak.

This short tutorial will show you how to create dynamic presentations in OpenOffice.org Impress able to display graphical images (figures, charts, etc.) which incorporate latest changes in the reality back at home. You can have last minute information which you had no time to update, presented live to your audience at conferences through your slideshow. You can have your team back in the office assembling last minute charts for you and when you start your slideshow, the charts will show up in your presentation.

Ingredients:
1. The OpenOffice.org office suite. I use to carry with me a portable version of the application on an USB stick, available from http://www.portableapps.com
2. An internet connection
3. A web server which either automatically generates the needed images and charts or where your team uploads by FTP the images having a predefined filename.
4. You need to know the exact URL of the images you are going to display

Creating the presentation:
1. Make sure your internet connection is opened and that the images are available on your web server.
2. Create a new presentation in Impress with the layout you desire. Reserve the space in your slides for the dynamic images you are going to insert.

3. Go to Insert menu and select: Insert -> Picture -> From file…
4. In the file selection window check the “LINK” checkbox so that images are not cached locally and then type in the “File name” box the exact URL of the remote image you want to insert (e.g. http://www.yourserver.com/dynamic-img-1.png)

5. Click the Open button and wait until the remote image appears in your slide.
6. Resize the image as needed, test the presentation and then save your file.

Note: each time you open up the presentation in Impress, the images will update from the Internet presenting you the latest data (for instance: the hit counter from the website).

If you need to update the images without closing and re-opening the presentation, simply follow these steps:
- go to the Edit menu and select Links: Edit -> Links…
- in the links window, select the images you want to reload from the internet and click the Update button

- close the window and you will see the updated images in your presentation

Show time:
- In conferences make sure you have internet connection available on the computer you are using for presentation.
- Open up the presentation in Impress and start conferencing. Of course you need to pay attention to the updated figures or charts too, in order to adjust the comments.

This tutorial takes advantage of a less documented feature in OpenOffice.org which allows you to deliver valid Internet Addresses (URL) instead of a file name in the Insert Picture dialog box.

There can be various usage cases for this feature and different technical ways of having new data created on the server which delivers you the images. You can either have a web script dynamically generating the images you need or you can have an operator in you office uploading the images you use in the presentation.

Good luck with your presentations and please drop a comment if you encountered problems or if this worked for you. Having friends traveling and conferencing ? Send them this article.

Have fun!

Written by cdriga on October 31st, 2007 with 1 comment.
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