Publishing PowerPoint presentations

PowerPoint presentations are not supported by Multimedia Manager, and cannot be posted as-is to the website. Even when saved as .MOV files with PowerPoint's "Save As Movie" command, presentations lose their transitions and custom animations when uploaded and viewed on a website.

Publishing a link to your presentation

The easiest way to distribute a PowerPoint presentation would be to upload it to File Manager, and then post a link to the file on a webpage. Users would be able to download a copy of the file and view it on their own computers, provided they have a copy of PowerPoint. This would allow you to preserve any custom animations, slide transitions and timing in the presentation, but the presentation itself would not be displayed on the website.

Hosting PowerPoint presentations directly on your site

It is possible to convert a PowerPoint presentation to a format that is compatible with your site. PowerPoint presentations are saved as .PPTX (MS Office XP and later) or .PPT (MS Office 2007 and earlier) files. You can convert these files into other formats, but there are some caveats. Read on for more information about converting PowerPoint files, but note that any file conversion is an opportunity to introduce errors and unanticipated formatting into a presentation. It's a good idea to proofread and double check any presentation after converting to a new format to ensure that the information it contains remains accurate and correctly formatted!

A static PowerPoint slideshow without transitions, embedded video, sound effects or other multimedia features can be saved as a .PDF file by using the Microsoft Save As PDF plug-in for MS Office. After saving your presentation as a .PDF you can upload to the website, where other users can download the file and view it with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program.

PowerPoint has the option to save a presentation as an .HTML file for the web, but this is not recommended. As with a .PDF, any transitions or other effects will be lost when converting to .HTML. Also note that as a general rule, software that is not specifically designed to create web content tends to produce .HTML code that is unreliable or is not necessarily compatible with all browsers. If you do decide to save your presentation as a webpage, be sure to view it with multiple browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox at least) before publishing the page to make sure it still displays as you intend it.

Hosting your presentation on a third-party site

If you do not wish to convert your PowerPoint file to another format and you want to display the slides on your website, you can upload your presentation to a third-party website which will host a copy that is suitable for presentation on the web. Again, any animated transitions, background music or other rich content will be lost; however, users will be able to navigate through your presentation easily.