How to Adapt Targus Stow-N-Go Remote for PowerPoint Etc.

Targus Stow-N-Go™ Media Remote Control (AMR01EU) is a simple radio-based keyboard extender that allows to control most popular music Windows apps on a PC from up to 15 meters away. It makes use of 2.4GHz RF technology and a tiny receiver that should be plugged in to USB port and has Plug & Play capability.

The ultra-slim size of the media remote control card allows both the card and receiver to be stored together in the notebook’s PCMCIA slot.

The most promising part was presented as a table in Instruction Manual suggesting that these two keys in the last row can be reprogrammed or captured and used for controlling PowerPoint (see the photo).

It appears that these two keys simply duplicate "R" and "F" keys on
regular keyboard (responsible for "reverse" and "forward" scanning of media files in WinDVD).

So, I decided to trick PowerPoint and checked which keys are used by PowerPoint to control the presentation and found that to perform the next animation or advance to the next slide user has to press N, ENTER, PAGE DOWN, RIGHT ARROW, DOWN ARROW, or the SPACEBAR (or click the mouse) and to perform the previous animation or return to the previous slide P, PAGE UP, LEFT ARROW, UP ARROW, or BACKSPACE.

Remapping the R and F keys to RIGHT ARROW and LEFT ARROW keys became a tricky part.

FYI: I created my own keyboard layout in Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4 and it worked well in PowerPoint but only in editing mode. Presentation mode seems to use some more low-level access to keyboard and regardless the current keyboard layout selected - these keys worked according to factory settings. So, that was a no go.

The working solution I have for a moment is using Keyboard Remapper which allows to define two key combinations in freeware version - which is just enough. Thumb up!

That scenario can be also used to control other applications but you have to do some research on the particular keys to "remap".

Good luck!