Practica Prophetica

The FolioViews program is the most popular format for accessing the Ellen White writings on desktop and laptop PC’s. One person once asked me how to create hyperlinks to Folio in a Slideshow, so that by clicking the Bible or Ellen White reference, the appropriate book will pop up.

What you will need to do is create a hyperlink to the text in your Slideshow program.

To create a hyperlink in LibreOffice, select the reference text, then press Ctrl-K (or Insert->Hyperlink from the menus).

For links to Ellen White’s books

For example, suppose you wanted to link to the book Desire of Ages, page 32, starting with the text, “God’s purposes know no haste and no delay.”

1. Type the text: DA 32.1
2. Highlight it by dragging through it.
3. Press Ctrl-K (or Insert->Hyperlink).
4. Format the hyperlink like this:
   

   “C:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Views.exe” -q [Field bc:da][Field pg:32] “God’s purposes” -i “C:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Books\egw-comp.nfo”

   (it may appear as two lines on this page, but should be typed all as one, without any carriage returns, but only spaces between the elements)

NOTE: The paths may be different on your system.

Now let’s explain the command string:

1. The first part is the path to the “Views.exe” program.
2. Then comes the query starting with “-q”.
3. [Field bc:da] means you are restricting the query to the “bookcode” with “da” (Desire of Ages).
4. [Field pg:32] means you are restricting it further to Page 32 of that book.
5. The text after the “pg” code defines where the page will open, which words will be highlighted. In this example we look for the text that starts with “God’s purposes”. (NOTE: You can also use [Field pr:1] to define the paragraph number.)
6. Then comes the path to the egw folio infobase “egw-comp.nfo”. Again, check this path so that it works on your system.

Before using the string, test it out to make sure the paths are correct. Try typing it into a text editor, then select and copy it to the clipboard, open a command window, and paste it in, to see how it works. It should launch the Folio Views program, with the proper book/page/text highlighted.

For links to Bible texts

It is also possible to apply the same steps for Bible links, although the field definitions are slightly different. Here is an example for Genesis 1:1:

“C:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Views.exe” -q [Contents genesis][Field Chapter:1][Field Verse:1] -i “C:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Books\kjv.nfo”

---

Further Notes in 2021

So, apparently due to some changes in the security of links made in PowerPoint, this type of command (with parameters) cannot be used anymore. It won’t work. Here is the new way. The workaround is to use a BAT file.

1. The first step though, is to test your command in the Terminal. Type CMD at the Start Menu or Search menu if you have that turned on, and run it. Type in your command and press Enter. If you get an error, then your command is faulty, and must be fixed. Check to make sure quotes are present around any paths with spaces in them.
2. Once your command string is working in CMD, then create a new Text file and copy it in. When saving this file, make sure to name it with the “.bat” extension. Try to give the file a simple name, without any spaces. The contents of my bat file look like this:

@echo off
"C:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Views.exe" -q[field bc:da][field pg:32]god's purposes -i "c:\Estate\EGW Research\Folio\Books\egw-comp.nfo"

The “@echo off” just stops the command from showing in the black terminal window that pops up. You don’t need it, it’s just a bit cleaner with it in there.

3. Now go to PowerPoint and make your Hyperlink. Type in the name (plus path) of the “bat” file.
4. Try to Ctrl-click the link to see if it works. You may get a warning message about running hyperlinks. If you want to disable that, it is necessary to modify the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID>\EditFlags registry subkey. Follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
   2. Locate the following registry subkey: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\batfile\EditFlags
   3. Click EditFlags, and then click Rename on the Edit menu.
   4. Type OldEditFlags, and then press ENTER.
   5. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD value.
   6. Type EditFlags, and then press ENTER.
   7. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
   8. In the Edit DWORD Value dialog box, click Hexadecimal under Base.
   9. Type 10000, and then click OK.
5. You will also get the black terminal window popping up just before the Folio Views runs. If you want to eliminate that, it is not so simple. You have to use a third-party “silent command” program. See this webpage.
6. If you want to run the Folio Views program to start up maximized (so it fills the screen when it starts), you can create a link to the Views.exe, by right-clicking the EXE and choosing “Create shortcut”. Once that is created, right-click the new shortcut link and choose Properties. In the Shortcut tab change the Run value to “Maximized”. You will now reference the LNK instead of the EXE in your command. You may have to rename the LNK file as Windows tends to make it something like “Views.exe – Shortcut.lnk”. You can rename it and just call it “Views.lnk”. The final command will look like this:

@echo off
"C:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Views.lnk" -q[field bc:da][field pg:32]god's purposes -i "c:\Estate\Research 2008\Folio\Books\egw-comp.nfo"