Render Powerpoint

You can use a raster graphics editor or something similar to capture a screen shot of each frame...

That would defeat the entire purpose of what I am trying to achieve. I am not going to rely upon the user to save each frame as a separate image. This is going to be used in a user-friendly program.

Powerpoint gives you VBA and allows you to use it from any application that supports (COM? COM+?, I'm not up to date).

Look into that, you can reduce all of the above into a single menu option, that'll be part of PP's menu.

If you don't want to launch powerpoint, you can use its COM interface without spawning the gui. There's a parameter i believe on the presentation::open method that prevents the gui from launching.

Each slide interface has an export method which will save that slide as a jpg/png/bmp so you can just iterate over the slides and export each.

Thanks for the replys, I didn't know I could access it through COM. Do you have any relative links on this?

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Original post by LanceRC If you don't want to launch powerpoint, you can use its COM interface without spawning the gui. There's a parameter i believe on the presentation::open method that prevents the gui from launching.

You still need to launch real PowerPoint, so it doesn't save you much.

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Thanks for the replys, I didn't know I could access it through COM. Do you have any relative links on this?

COM is really ugly, you sure you want to do this? I'd try VBA first.

Visual Basic allows trivial access to generating AddOns, and allows you for more convenient distribution.

This type of thing has also been done before.

The most trivial example however involves approximately 10 lines of VBA code, such as this example, all you need to add is a for loop that will export all slides, instead of just 3rd.

I need to access a powerpoint file from within my program, not through powerpoint. I don't want the user to have to mess with opening up powerpoint at all.

Edit:
I would like the users machine to not have powerpoint installed at all anyway. Perhaps someone has relevant information regarding the file format of a powerpoint?

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Original post by MetaCipher I need to access a powerpoint file from within my program, not through powerpoint. I don't want the user to have to mess with opening up powerpoint at all.

In that case you'll need to write your own renderer. you might be able to get by with Open office, but I'm not sure on that.

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I would like the users machine to not have powerpoint installed at all anyway.

Microsoft however would not like that, and requires you to have a license on every machine your application runs.

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Perhaps someone has relevant information regarding the file format of a powerpoint?

Surprisingly the power point format is available. Unfortunately, the following is by far the best advice someone who developed those things says about it.

Keep in mind that file format is the easy part. It's writing a renderer that's the 1+ years job.

Unless you're getting paid upwards of a year's wage for this project, using PowerPoint is just about the only way to do it.


Simply put - if this is multi-user environment, write a web service to do that.
If you want to sell this as standalone application, provide it as AddOn.

COM is still an option, but you'll need to have PP installed.

Anything else - not worth the cost.