Speech in PowerPoint (VBA) - vba

Question

I want to be able to make PowerPoint speak, say something.
I tried this code to make PP speak:
Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Application.Speech.Speak "Hello World"
End Sub
But the code doesn't work, it doesn't exists. What can I do, which is the right code?
It says:
Compile Error Method or Data member not found.
Sorry for any error on my question.

Answer 1

The reason it's not working is that there's no Application.Speech property/method in the PPT object model. Somewhere or other I've seen code that invokes Excel to do the lifting but here's an answer from John Wilson of PPT Alchemy that seems more direct:
There is a page on our site about talking message boxes
http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/PowerPoint_speech.html
It could be easily modified to speak the text in a shape in Slide Show mode.
Sub speak(oshp As Shape)
Dim strSpeak As String
Dim SAPIObj As Object
Set SAPIObj = CreateObject("SAPI.SPvoice")
SAPIObj.Rate = -2
If oshp.HasTextFrame Then
If oshp.TextFrame.HasText Then
strSpeak = oshp.TextFrame.TextRange.Text
End If
End If
SAPIObj.speak "<pitch middle='-15'>" & strSpeak
End Sub
If you don't need to pick up the text from a particular shape, a modification along these lines should do it:
Sub SayThisAloud(sText as String)
Dim SAPIObj As Object
Set SAPIObj = CreateObject("SAPI.SPvoice")
SAPIObj.Rate = -2
SAPIObj.speak "<pitch middle='-15'>" & sText
End Sub

Answer 2

REgarding the MSDN page, it'll take some editing/modification to convert it to something a bit more useful. For example, here's an example of how you can get a list of the voices available:
In the declarations section:
Private V As Object
Private T As Object
Then
Sub ListVoices()
On Error GoTo EH
Dim strVoice As String
Dim SAPIObj As Object
Set SAPIObj = CreateObject("SAPI.SPvoice")
'Get each token in the collection returned by GetVoices
For Each T In SAPIObj.GetVoices
strVoice = T.GetDescription 'The token's name
'List1.AddItem strVoice 'Add to listbox
Debug.Print strVoice
Next
Exit Sub
EH:
If Err.Number Then ShowErrMsg
End Sub
Private Sub ShowErrMsg()
' Declare identifiers:
Dim T As String
T = "Desc: " & Err.Description & vbNewLine
T = T & "Err #: " & Err.Number
MsgBox T, vbExclamation, "Run-Time Error"
End
End Sub