PowerPoint 2013 - Kiosk Mode with Touch Enabled - Touch does not work with Mouse Click Action Configured on Text Boxes

Hello Ryan and other readers,

I've been programming on Microsoft products since Basic-80/Basic-69 : you and most of your team are probably too young to know those products ;-) lol). This is the first time, in my career that I have one ... no two of my wishes answered by Microsoft. I feel like the Creator of the Matrix has interceded in my favour!!! Fixing those 2 things would be Awesome.

As for our project, I had to ask permission (took a little time - the reason for my delay) and yes, I can show and explain our project. But, of course, I cannot publish the whole code. If you have question, please do ask and feel free to talk about our PowerPoint based custom e-learning system.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank PPT MVPs like Steve Rindsberg and the others : Thank you so much for your work! You are an important part of the PPT community. Appreciated.

You can contact me by email but I did not feel confortable publishing my adress on a forum. But for you and others who would like to know more about our project, you will be able to write me if you can decode my email :

Base64 UTF-8:           cGFsYWRpbjc3N0Bob3RtYWlsLmNvbQ==

Thank you Ryan, thank you also to the whole Ms PPT team and MVPs for your great work.

How would the fix be provided? ... and when would we able to test/use it?

Zach, thank you for your description of your scenario.  Please help me understand why normal slideshow was not sufficient for you scenario.  I know that I'm being a bit of a hassle but I need as much information as I can to be able to sell code changes, especially to in-market products that don't get updated often.

Normal slideshow wasn't suffice because it allows the user to open up the menu at the bottom left by click-holding which allows the user to close the presentation. This also allows the user to swipe from either side to go through my presentation linearly instead of to specific slides based on the buttons they click.

Ryan:  APPLAUSE!

Thanks for jumping on this so quickly and for anything you can do to get it sent Back To The (past) Future.  Had to sneak that in somehow, right?

Just a quick update.  I have fixed the problem and getting it checked into our main codebase shouldn't be a problem.

Again, I have to stress this.  I cannot guarantee that the powers-at-be will approve it for back porting to Office 2013.  I will try my hardest to convince them.  The fix is fairly safe and only affects kiosk mode, but, again, I can't promise anything.

Also, I discovered there's a PPT option already for turning off the SlideShow toolbar!  Yay, don't have to fix that one :).  If you're wondering: File -> options -> advanced -> find slideshow section -> click the checkbox next to "Show SlideShow toolbar" or whatever it's named.

>> #3 is clearly a bug.  From some of the other comments, it seems like you guys would like hyperlinks + touch + kiosk mode to work and I agree.  It should work the same as the mouse.

We can all agree on that ... great. 

>> Being able to navigate the presentation with touch in kiosk mode (outside of hyperlinks) is most likely not going to get approved.  In this scenario, what does kiosk mode provide that normal slideshow would be insufficient?

I don't think anyone's asking for that.  The ask seems to be "Make it work with touch like it does with a pen or with the mouse."  Hyperlinks and (important!) action buttons as well.  

I wouldn't get sidetracked by the part about macros ... unless I miss my guess, the situation is that the user's added action buttons with the action set to Run Macro.  When clicked during a show, the requested macro runs.  And if it works the same with touch as with pen/mouse, that'd be good to go also.