Question of the day: How do I put a Powerpoint presentation on the web?

This is a great question. Because, as legal marketers, we want to share our lawyers' wisdom, but not necessarily all the content of every Powerpoint file in its raw and cut-and-paste-able form.

You may also want to share material  with people who do not own Powerpoint. You may also want to keep people stuck on your website, rather than simply letting them download a Powerpoint presentation only to toddle off, no longer viewing your lovely, content-rich, web-delivered experience.

Thankfully, there's a whole bunch of options, depending on what you want your viewers to do, and how you want to present the material. Some are included with Powerpoint. Some are retail solutions. A few are free. Free you say? Bring on the free stuff!

The native methods

From Powerpoint, you should be able to "Save As Web Page" or "Save as HTML." That will create a whole pile of linked documents. It doesn't always do the neatest, cleanest job of creating the links and necessary embedded graphics, and you'll still need someone who knows how to post them to your website, but it's quick, and it doesn't require any outside software.

You could also simply post the Powerpoint file along with a pointer to the Microsoft free download of the Powerpoint viewer that lets people look at, but not edit, Powerpoint files.

The brute-force graphics method

From Powerpoint, do a "Save As" and choose "save as type," then "JPG." You'll be prompted as to whether you want to save just the current slide or the whole she-bang-a-bang (my wording). If you choose to do all of them, you'll be prompted for a file-name; this name will be the sub-directory where all the slide files will be created. When you save, you'll get a JPG for each slide, named (helpfully), "Slide1.jpg," "Slide2.jpg," etc.

You can then take these JPG files and post them to your website, either all on one page, so's people can scroll down, or in series with "click here to proceed" buttons, etc. Many web design programs and blog hosts also have photo gallery creation support tools. You could use that functionality to create a gallery that is a set of Powerpoint slides instead of a set of pictures of you getting funky-fresh at Spring Break 2005.

The executable method

In case you've never heard of it, there's a freeware program out there called  InfranView (the absolute best graphics viewing/conversion/utility program ever created. Did I mention  it's entirely free? And available here.  I've used Photoshop and Quark Xpress and Illustrator for years, but always keep IView around because it's such a great little all-around graphic workhorse utility. It's great for viewing files , batch conversions, cropping, viewing thumbnails... all kinds of helpful stuff. AND... there is a plug-in that comes standard that will let you create a stand-alone, executable slide-show from any set of graphic files.

So, you take that set of JPG files from the "brute force method" above, load them into IView, and export them into a single, stand-alone EXE file. Post that to your website and folks can either download it or run it right from their browser. Each image pops up, full screen, and you advance and go backwards by clicking your mouse buttons. This would also work very well as a distro method on CD-ROMs for your firm's Powerpoints.

Here's about 10 pages of one of my PowerPoints as an example of an EXE created by IView:

Download Creativity.exe

You right-click your mouse to go forward, left click to go back.

The retail methods

There are a number of retail products that convert Powerpoint presentations to either web-based or mpg videos.  Some of the more popular are:

• PresenterSoft
• Impact Engine
• The Illinois Accessible Web Publishing Wizard for Microsoft Office. The nice thing about this solution is that it will work with any Office file; Word, Excel, etc.
• iMediaCONVERT --  publishes your Powerpoint to Flash.

Each have their ups and downs. For my money, I'd go with the Illinois AWPW.

The freeware methods

What if you don't have Powerpoint? I know... you're probably not that interested in converting Powerpoint files if you don't have the software. But you've probably seen it. And maybe you're a bit envious. It looks like fun. All those bullets. Well, there are freeware alternatives to the Microsoft Monster.

OpenOffice -- This is an entire suite of software that is, essentially,  an open-source version of Microsoft Office.  It has a word processor, spreadsheet, database tools, drawing program and presentation module -- the last of which is analogous to (and supports imports and exports to and from) Powerpoint. Here's why I bring it up in this post -- OpenOffice Impress (the presentation module) includes an "export to flash" function and an excellent "export to HTML" wizard. And the whole deal-i-o is part of the free package.

I downloaded and installed the entire OpenOffice package in about 15 minutes. It took me another 3 minutes to figure out how to convert my Powerpoint presentation to a Flash file. The result is can be seen here, as long as your browser supports Flash. Left click to advance the slides. Depending on your Flash viewer, you may or may not be able to reverse the program.

Here's something interesting to note; the Flash version contains my entire presentation (about 40 slides), and yet is 1/4 the size of the executable version, which only contained about 10 slides. Flash is a much more efficient file format.

Another neat  freeware program is called Screenbook Maker. It's an alternative to Powerpoint, does not use compatible files, and is really only for creating HTML delivered presentations with tables of contents, etc. It was developed for use by teachers who wanted to deliver on-line lessons, but there's no reason you can't use it to hold forth on HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley.

Conclusion

If you've got a bunch of nice old Powerpoint presentations laying around the law firm's hard drives that you think would make for some good marketing materials, you've got plenty of options. Take some time and put that content to good marketing use.

Comments

[Robert Williamson]

Thank you for this helpful post. I've been experimenting with the methods you recommend. Question: Do any of the programs other than Power Point's "convert to web page" capture information included on the notes field?

To minimize text bullets, I often put case cites etc on the notes page rather than on the slide itself.

I can print the slides with the notes and give or mail the result to tthe participants, but I'd rather post them to my web page and encourage the particpants via a follow up letter to visit.

[Solveig Haugland]

Hi,

So glad you posted this! The new 2.0 version of Impress is so much easier, looks great and has great effects, and is very much like Powerpoint.

Another nice way to get a presentation on the web is to convert it to PDF. You can do this by opening a PowerPoint presentation in Impress, or just creating one in Impress. Then choose File > Export as PDF. You can then run your presentation in Adobe Reader. The effects don't run, of course.

I have a blog on the steps here.
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/01/when_you_presen.html

I learned from a comment on my blog that in Reader you can press Ctrl-L to enter presentation mode. Your slides will now cover the entire screen just as they would when using OpenOffice.org Impress or PowerPoint. Cursor keys (or mouse clicks) navigate the slides as you normally would.