Create A Live Clock In Any PowerPoint Presentation (No Flash!)

[@brucewan2292]

Great tutorial! For those who are not familiar with VB script, copy and paste the following lines to the VB application: Public clock As Boolean Public currenttime, currentday As String Sub Pause() Dim PauseTime, Start PauseTime = 1 Start = Timer Do While Timer < Start + PauseTime DoEvents Loop End Sub Sub StartClock() clock = Time Do Until clock = False On Error Resume Next currenttime = Format((Now()), "hh:mm:ss AM/PM") currenttime = Mid(currenttime, 1, Len(currenttime) - 3) ActivePresentation.Slides(SlideShowWindows(1).View.CurrentShowPosition).Shapes("shpClock").TextFrame.TextRange.Text = currenttime Pause Loop End Sub Sub OnSlideShowPageChange(ByVal objWindow As SlideShowWindow) clock = Flase ActivePresentation.Slides(SlideShowWindows(1).View.CurrentShowPosition).Shapes("shpClock").TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "--:--:--" End Sub Sub OnSlideShowPageTerminate() clock = False End Sub

[@JorgePrates]

what is currentday for ?

[@JorgePrates]

clock = Time -> clock = True clock = Flase -> clock = False

[@aathehuman]

thanks for the help. do you know how to change it to a 24 hour clock?

[@chobitsconspiracy]

I woke up today having never coded anything. I am ending my day with a clock in my teaching slides. (Canadian: We don't use the word Faff, but I know it from watching enough British youtube content. It is an excellent word and I've started adopting it). Your explanation was clear, concise, and I was able to troubleshoot and edit to my heart's content (I didn't need the seconds appearing on the slide). Thanks so much!

[@chickenfish5274]

I am clearly going to be the coolest teacher (biggest nerd) in the school now with my timer and my clock in slide shows! Thanks! So helpful!

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad you liked it ChickenFish

[@ErikEinum]

Thank you! I hardly ever log in to like or comment on YT, but this tutorial deserved both.

[@TheTechTrain]

Thank you so much! I'm very glad you enjoyed it. 😊

[@janettaylor]

AMAZING! It does exactly what I wanted. I've never coded before and you made it super easy. Thank you!

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad it worked for you, and that you enjoyed it! 😊

[@transportfan08]

*OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH! I'VE BEEN TRYING THIS FOREVER!!*

[@ederscience7537]

That is just what I needed. I used to use a flash clock until they no longer supported it. This will be a lifesaver!

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm glad it helped

[@danicadupreez2728]

Wow, thank you as a teacher with limited funds this has really made a difference! Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!!

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad to be able to help! If you need a low budget, DIY resource, please let me know - I welcome ideas and challenges to add to the channel!

[@faisalmoghal4055]

Thanks so much. This is amazing, especially now that Microsoft have ANNOYINGLY removed flash support. One question: is there a way to change this to a 24 hour clock? UPDATE: managed to get it in 24-hour by using "Long Time" rather than hh:mm:ss in the format section. This uses you PC's time format

[@lauraallison1012]

Awesome tutorial - exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!

[@RondenBreems]

Great routine! Could it be possible to use an event like 'start presentation' or 'show slide x' to trigger the 'start clock' routine and a 'leave slide' event to trigger clock=false ???

[@willytichener]

Hi, I followed your instructions but I only got a placeholder dashes and colons with a line underneath, where did I go wrong?

[@louiseshedden3326]

I have never coded anything - but I managed this, few oops moments. Thank you! Was desperately trying to show time on a PowerPoint for my students! YOU ARE AWESOME.

[@hiteshk3007]

Thank you very much for telling the things so nicely that a person like me who is unfamiliar with VBA could also run the clock in powerpoint. The problem I am facing is that whenever I change slide I need to click the clock textbox in order to run it. Else it stops on changing the slide. How to fix it.

[@JuliArvi]

Thank you! This works so well for my college's information hub!

[@natashaabrahams9251]

Thank you so much for your guidance! I don't know code, and your step by step explanation made me a winner! Thank you!

[@natashaabrahams9251]

Is there any way I could embed or copy this clock into Google Slides? Or is that a different code?

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad you found it useful!

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm afraid that Google Slides uses a completely different coding language, so this couldn't just be copied across. I may look at covering Google coding at some point in the future.

[@natashaabrahams9251]

@@TheTechTrain Thanks so much!

[@scarpien]

@@TheTechTrain Please do. I have the same concern. I guess in the meantime I'll create a powerpoint of my classroom scene.

[@ionebarros9778]

Awesome! I followed your instructions and the clock is working perfectly on my PPT presentations. :)

[@terencepepper665]

Excellent presentation - clear and at the right speed.

[@taufikhidayatnad]

This is save my life. I was asked to put clock on ppt slides for a zoom meeting, so people from different time zone aware of time. I went through several matsclock for ppt video tutorial, but unfortunately it is not working anymore with the absence of flash player. I have no basic in writing coding, but I have to do since there is no other option than using macro. After correcting some typos that made the macro did not run, Finally, I made it. It shows in my ppt slide. Thanks The Tech Train.

[@UsedReviews]

Do you have this code written down somewhere I can copy from. I can't seem to get this to work.

[@danishrehman240]

Hi, Thanks for sharing the video it helped a lot to unlock my clock. I further checked on internet and managed to use (almost) continuous clock by assigning the action "MouseOver" to some major objects on my presentation slides

[@RaxLakhani]

That's a genius workaround! So, you could, for example, insert a giant transparent rectangle in the foreground of the slide and insert the mouseover action to run the macro? Any slight movement would update with current time. I guess with this solution, the step at 26:17 can be removed?

[@amandajackson284]

Thank you so much! In the south US, we say "Finicky" and we say "Heck."

[@woodythdog]

Thanks for this Awesome tutorial , I used it to add a clock to the waiting room Slide for my online class, the only tweak I made was changing the " --:--:-- " to "START"

[@TheTechTrain]

Glad it helped!

[@janetmagday5469]

Thank you for this! Choosing the font does take time. Hoping to see how to make a timer that you can set for a certain period of time for breaks.

[@jproppecollege6082]

Incredible! Thank you so much. You are an incredible instructor :-)

[@TheTechTrain]

Thank you very much! That's very kind of you to say so. I'm so glad you liked the video.

[@prophetwayne9397]

Thank you Sir. What you have showed me was extremely helpful and I appreciate the time you took to make this video. I will be using this as a timer in church to show real time as we go into the year 2020 and I will also be using it for other services

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad you like it, and I hope it works well for you for your New Year celebration. Happy 2020!

[@prophetwayne9397]

Thank you Sir God Bless. Iv liked, subscribed and shared your video and will definitely start following you. Your content will be extremely useful for me

[@transportfan08]

@@TheTechTrain I'm using this and I love it, *BUT* I need to add a custom countdown timer like this with NO FLASH. The videos on how to do this use youtube videos, make you pay EXTREME amounts of money for a software *subscription* OR use animations and only count down from 5 or 10. If you could make a video like this on *but a countdown timer* I would really appreciate it. Regards, Conor.

[@kickieriksson]

Thank you! This is a wonderful presentation. I'm just wondering about how to do it if you use 24-hour time as we do in Sweden? Maybe you have a video about that, I am going to look around all your videos now. Wonderful, really.

[@kickieriksson]

Hi again, I solved it by myself, I just removed AM/PM 😃 Thanks again!

[@rhenginal3699]

Loved this video! Super helpful. I am a teacher as well, and having the time displayed on my slides is often something I desperately need. It seems like there should be a built-in live clock, or at least an ad-in, but I couldn't find one anywhere! Something I loved about this tutorial was that it wasn't just an explanation of how to do it, but also why you need every part and what each code line does. I feel like I learned a lot more than just how to insert a live clock into my slide show. I was wonder, though, is there a way to make it so that the clock is just constantly running on every slide? Having to click the text box in order to start the clock can be a little tedious. I really just want a constant live clock in the bottom corner of my slide show so that my students never have to ask me what time it is, or use that as an excuse to pull out their phones. I tried to just ad another bit of code that says to run the start clock subroutine on slide transition, but that didn't work at all. I don't know if I typed the code in wrong or if the idea just doesn't work, but I'd love to get this working. Thanks!

[@RosnerTheWriter]

Yay! I did it!! The Timer/Clock function on the Promeathan Board at work does not show the clock or timer. With this embedded clock, the students can tell the time during their NYS ELA Regents exams. Thanks!

[@JR-tv3dv]

Very helpful tutorial - I am familiar with VB, so could have sped up a bit when discussing the program, but I appreciate that the audience is diverse and the explanations are nice and clear. Still amazed that there is no clock/timer functions as default within Powerpoint....

[@bmack94536]

Huge help for my presentations. Thank you!

[@frank_busche]

Thank you for this very good tutorial. Can the macro be adapted so that it starts automatically with the slide? So that the clock is immediately visible on the page?

[@RaxLakhani]

did you figure out a solution for this? I'm looking to do the same thing, so as the slides advance, the clock frame doesn't need to be activated each time

[@gaurav.anirbandutta]

I have the same question

[@AndyVinson]

Very very informative! Love the explanations for every piece.

[@Sss.ssS7766]

Thank you very much. This is awesome educate. May I ask you one struggle I found. My live clock as I following you every step. But my clock cant play automatically. Please kindly suggest. Thank you

[@dronevluchten]

A great solution. Although you should also add a SUB for OnSlideShowTerminate otherwise VBA remains running. ANother problem is that both events OnSlideShow.... are deprecated and replaced by application events. And I get those not working....

[@brandigore8820]

Wow! Thank you very much! This was really cool to learn!

[@james-reid]

Great video - thank you!! Two things I would like to know: - Can I make the clock start simply when the slide appears? (Maybe I missed something?) - I have a video running on the slide at the same time (it is the stock video with the hearts on the balloons) - the video is very smooth when I play it without the clock, but it becomes very jerky with the clock - is there any way to make this better? (i have an i7 processor - don't think it is a lack of CPU power that is causing the problem) Thanks!

[@TheTechTrain]

Glad you liked the video! The trouble is that PowerPoint's VBA doesn't support multithreading, which can make it very laggy. The reason I have the clock stopping between slides is because if you don't do that, the clock will never stop - even after you exit the presentation! It will slow things down to a painful crawl. I spent a lot of time playing with different approaches, and carried out a lot of research, and this is the best solution. If you're playing a video then I would suggest having that on a slide without the clock, so it's not competing for system resources.

[@johnmaloney7855]

Is it easy to covert to a 24 hr clcok? Thanks

[@geko7844]

I'm an absolute novice at coding, so this may break everything, however where you write 'Format', I have just written "hh:mm.ss" (so removed the AM/PM) and also then deleted the line of code underneath. Hope this works for you!

[@MagnaLynx21]

Comment for the algorithm, sales office managers will be a fan of yours ;)

[@TheTechTrain]

All part of the service! Glad it helped.

[@kulbirsg84]

Excellent tutorial, thanks a lot, how can I Start the clock automatically on the slide load? thanks for letting me know

[@ronaldcaceres7753]

This video is one of my favorites. But I have a question... How do I initiate the same moment of the presentation without action?

[@Nitpickerman]

Thanks for this tip. Since I did not like when the letters in fonts have different width the output moves a bit when the clock runs. I modified this so that everyletter as well as the colon-texts were own ones. Now the placing is not changing even though showing numbers of different width. I will also make an other modification, that is to be used for short breaks. But thumbs up for this code snip.

[@gaurav.anirbandutta]

Share the code please

[@GaryWeak]

Hi, Very nice tutorial, easy to follow. Worked perfectly first time. I am using the clock on one slide of a 2 slide presentation that I have running a loop continually at 30 second intervals. When I do this the clock stops when it gets back to the slide with the clock. Is there a setting I can change to fix this?

[@steveevans7307]

Well Done! Heck ya! (yes, we use that term...ya gotta watch the video!) You are a very talented teacher. I had one small typo so I had to debugg to find it. Purely my fault, though, your video was terrific. I'll be back!

[@TheTechTrain]

Heck, what a great comment! Thank you so much, and very glad you liked it.

[@weasleyhead22]

Hey Its Worked! The Code is working!

[@robertrisacher4190]

I managed to make this work on my Mac and I'm very grateful for the help. What I really want to do, however, is have the clock on every slide in the presentation, automate the presentation and not have to "press the button" on individual slides. Could the VB be modified to auto start with the presentation and restart with each slide as it initializes?

[@TheKlali100]

Mr Tech Train I owe you my life

[@palmbeachaircraftpropeller5340]

Thank you for this solution. I is nearly complete for me. I need to work on getting the clock to activate automatically rather than click on it but I'll do that soon. With regard to faffy/faffie etc. In the US, I've used Wiggy. This is when something is a bit 'weird' in its action or implementation. Heck... well that it the polite word. Dang, and other not so polite words can be used in its place but heck works well.

[@TheSugarDealers]

"Faffy" isn't too common in my part of the States, but we do have "a waste of time" and "busy work."

[@nica2446]

Hello thank you for the great video. is there a way of starting the clock automatically?

[@TMXGroup]

Nice tutorial, I just wonder if is possible to create a count-down real-time clock in powerpoint. do you have any video for that? thanks

[@mrsuliban]

thank you for teaching us. 🙂

[@TheTechTrain]

My pleasure 😊

[@joestevens66]

Absolutely brilliant, my friend: worked like a dream. Heck, there was no faff either!

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad you liked it joestevens66

[@pyro1149]

Great Video! Worked flawlessly. One question; what is currentday for at the top of the code. Also, I'd like to add the current date either at the top of the clock or on a different text box above the clock. Would that be possible by adding another line with a date or today function inside the Startclock code? Many thanks!!!

[@TheTechTrain]

Yes, you can do this. Just change the 'StartClock' subroutine to this: Sub StartClock() clock = True Do Until clock = False On Error Resume Next currenttime = Format((Now()), "h:mm:ss AM/PM") currentday = Weekday(Now(), vbMonday) Dim lngWeekDay As Long: lngWeekDay = currentday Dim strWeekDayName As String strWeekDayName = WeekdayName(Weekday:=lngWeekDay, Abbreviate:=False, FirstDayOfWeek:=vbMonday) currenttime = Mid(currenttime, 1, Len(currenttime) - 3) 'includes seconds 'currenttime = Mid(currenttime, 1, Len(currenttime) - 6) 'no seconds ActivePresentation.Slides(SlideShowWindows(1).View.CurrentShowPosition).Shapes("shpClock").TextFrame.TextRange.Text = strWeekDayName & vbCrLf & currenttime Pause Loop End Sub

[@SBTempes]

How do you change it to display time in 24 hrs?

[@kgbadariprasad1]

Cool tutorial. Other than official presentations (where the template limits the experiments on the fonts, I concur with you on the challenge to find the right font for the presentations.

[@jewelcrystal]

This is very useful now that Flash is dead. Would you be able to make a countdown timer for 1 hour via VBA code? that you can pause, resume and reset to an hour or reset to specific time? if possible?

[@MarkOldfield-jm5no]

Fantastic - great Job.

[@TheTechTrain]

Many thanks!

[@danwhitmer8675]

I've watched this video and it was great. The only thing is how do you get the macro to work automatically? Like when you start the presentation and the clock shows without clicking on it. I make presentations for church and it would be nice to have a clock in the bottom corner on the screen during our opening videos in our preservice time, and then take it our during the service.

[@Holly-Cinogen]

I was looking for the same solution but TheTechTrain answered a question if it's possible for the clock to start automatically: I'm afraid not. It's one of the limitations of PowerPoint. It's because it can't handle multiple threads, which means that if you do try to do this, PowerPoint will just end up lagging horribly, and may even make other applications start lagging too. This is the best solution to the problem, even though it is a bit of a compromise.

[@TheTechTrain]

Thank you Holly!

[@hooralshehhi9770]

so hard but exactly what i was looking for

[@ianoneill8852]

Is there a way of autorunning the clock without selecting it first? My presentation has the clock running on 10 consecutive slides (fills the slide), so in presentation mode I need the clock to be running on each slide without selecting it first when I’m going through my presentation.

[@deeparanganathan361]

Thank you so much.It is very helpful.step by step explantion very nice

[@ronnymfho]

I made a real time clock by following your procedures and copying the code. There is one thing weird, the clock in some instance is underlined. But I have no idea why and when it appears. I found that in 24hr format, 18:35 was incorrectly shown as 06:35. I played with the settings and still could not figure out the workaround (settings: currenttime = Format((Now()), "hh:mm:ss AM/PM") currenttime = Mid(currenttime, 1, Len(currenttime) - 6))

[@たもんじろうちゃんねる2]

This is it ! Thank you very much.

[@trumpet5565]

This was so very helpful! Thank you - thank you - thank you. Your comments and instruction were very easy to follow. I manage a civic center for the community. This will look great on the screens.

[@TheTechTrain]

Glad it was helpful!

[@sanjwij]

Amazing tutorial, thank you so much and thank you @Bruce Wan for the copy and paste! Just what I was looking for. Unfortunately it's not working for me and I dont know VBA so totally stuck! will have another look in the morning, can't figure out what i'm doing wrong. you are an amazing teacher, you're certainly in the right profession!

[@sanjwij]

Hooray it's working, thank you so much! The time in underlined and I don't know how to undo that, but I'm so happy with it, will be using this for exams!

[@TheTechTrain]

The time is probably underlined because you clicked on that, rather than the edge of the box it's in. Try clicking once inside the time so that you have a flashing vertical text cursor, then right click and select "Remove Hyperlink". I'm very glad it's working for you apart from that! 😊👍

[@Alexandros.Deligiannis]

Dude you are the best!!! Thanks a lot !!!

[@TheTechTrain]

Thank you, so glad you like it!

[@ELEISONCARABALLO]

Awesome presentation. I need a countdown timer, about 5 minutes time lets say. Can you help and tell what changes are to be made in code?

[@3bs704]

Is there a way to start the macro automatically when displaying the slide?

[@lcloureiro]

I would like to know that too...

[@arnabgoswami4893]

Thank you for this. Can you please tell what to change in the code if I want to skip the start button?

[@koekdebakker6855]

hi, i hope you dont mind the message.. i used your clock solution on powerpoints used as signage, but only thing i cant get right is that the clock starts to run automaticaly... i think i totally missed it, but i only noticed you calling start clock on click or by button. what have i missed to let the clock auto run when the slite is stopping by?!

[@KimberlyAlesnaFano]

excellent! it works!

[@TheTechTrain]

Glad it helped!

[@LearnerCB246]

how would modify your clock as a timer/ coundown? say if i was taking a 2 hour quiz - click start quiz timer starts.

[@geoffstrickler]

Not that it’ll be a common occurrence, but your Pause procedure will get hung in a loop if it runs past midnight. Solution is simple, add an additional clause to your do while statement: do while timer < start + pausetime and timer > pausetime

[@zacksmith6053]

This saved me quite a bit of grief. Thanks!

[@slothere4047]

Thanks for the video. Also, I'll have a question, how can I change the time according to different GMTs? Can we code it in a way that shows the current time in China, Italy, or Dominic Republic, etc., countries that are in different timelines?

[@catrionagibbs9301]

This is amazing. Thank you! Is there a way to get the clock to work in Office 365?

[@TacticalAllRounder]

Yes

[@joannoonan6508]

I wrote the code as directed, how does PowerPoint "read" it? When I click Run Macro in the text box, I get an error (the dashes turn blue and I get a blue underscore) and the time does not appear. Thanks for your help.

[@TheTechTrain]

The code is run when you click the clock. I'm not sure what the mistake is you've made, but if you work through the video step by step you should get it - it definitely does work!

[@timgordon229]

Really excellent - very clear instructions. One thing that I might add into this, would be how to recycle the same macro into other PPT files. Many thanks again,

[@TheTechTrain]

I'm so glad you found it useful, thanks.

[@Salassquared]

Thanks for the tutorial, it is clear, easy, awesome.....! You are the man.

[@mustadxb09]

Cool and great Pedagogy!

[@CnSLearningFacilitators]

Could you show how to put countdown timer throughout the PPt show

[@jeremiah2829]

Thanks so much!!!! I appreciate it!

[@TheTechTrain]

You are so welcome!

[@SWebster-r9j]

Hi, late to the party on this one, but would adding a “clock =true” line to SlideShowPageChange mean the clock continues without interruption? I’m guessing the “clock =False” stops the clock from running on the previous slide, is that right?

[@TheTechTrain]

The problem you'll have is that your presentation will grind to a halt, and the software will become unusable even if you exit the presentation. PowerPoint is not multi-threaded, and this sub routine will continue to run, even after the presentation is over. Try it - you'll see what I mean, and why I have the clock stopping on every slide change. There was a very good reason for me doing it that way!

[@SWebster-r9j]

@@TheTechTrain I knew it wouldn’t be that easy!

[@tonylewis9273]

If I wanted the time to start without clicking it, can you do this?

[@sandradunhill2418]

Enjoyed the Tutorial very much. How would I make the time do a countdown? It's been awhile since I've used Visual Basic, so I'm relearning some of the commands. I have a project I'm working on now that my client wants a countdown timer to display while virtual meeting participants start joining the event and are waiting for it to start.

[@Apokalio1]

Hello, first of all thanks for the instruction. It only works fine until I loop the presentation for more than one slide. Whenever it comes to this clock slide, the clock is gone waiting for click... but it should be a loop presentation without operating it... Can you please help me? :(

[@nyjacobman]

Thank you so much. It is very helpful and your tutorial is very straightforward^^ But I have one question: will that be possible to make the clock carry over to the following slides and it will keep running without clicking over it?

[@gaurav.anirbandutta]

I have the same question

[@AlecWatson-ix3iy]

On the slidechange sub replace False with True

[@Den_G69]

Thank you very much, very helpful!

[@TheTechTrain]

You're very welcome, I'm so glad.

[@dannymcdevitt3602]

Do you have a count down timer video also?

[@OfficialJohnnyNelson]

Thanks for this, Justin. Huge help! Question: Is "currentday" needed in the string?

[@Thehunter4332]

Very useful! However when I add the action PowerPoint adds an underline to the text. Is there any way to get rid of the underline?

[@kennyyip4884]

Can you share how to do days countdown?

[@TheTechTrain]

Great idea! Noted.

[@dmv_p]

This was dope ... would be nice to create a "click" that automatically triggers the clock. Thanks!

[@gzless6226]

I tried to add a code on (now()) To be at zulu time so i did this below the on error resume next zuluTime =now() - time(3,0,0) Then replaced now() with zulu time at the next code but what it did is when clicking the time the clock disappeared. I know i can change time settings in my computer but asking if a code solution is possible

[@weasleyhead22]

Ok i made a os with Macro and it worked!

[@Misterholas]

Thanks very much for a very carefully put together tutorial, you are a talented teacher. I am on Mac atm (my home machine) so had to add the VB add-in from Bright Carbon to follow tutorial. No problem with code on the face of it having debugged it. But the clock will not display on mouse click. I am guessing this is to do with the proper name for system time in OSX not being the same in Windows. If anyone has any insight on how to pull system time into this code on a Mac I would be very grateful. In the meantime off for more coffee and some research.

[@angelalim7991]

Hi. i did everything till 30:00 but the timer didn't appear.....Any idea why? Need this quite urgently....Thanks!

[@mehc7]

great vid. Is there a way to have the clock already active on future slides without clicking it? Even with removing the "onslideshowpagechange" sub, it still doesn't seem to work. Guessing it has to do with altering the argument inside Slides().

[@TheTechTrain]

The problem is though that macros running in the background cause huge problems with PowerPoint, and can end up causing huge lag. I spent a good deal of time playing around with approaches and ideas, and this seemed the most stable. If you come across and improvements I'd be interested to hear them.

[@danishrehman240]

@@TheTechTrain Really appreciate your video, it helped me unlock my clock :) i figured out a way out for continuously running clock by applying "mouse over" actions to some major objects in my slides. (a buttons bar of slide links...)

[@TheoreticalLyrics876]

Can this be done for Microsoft word?

[@Kat21]

how do i do this without clicking like automatically start on presentation