Put your PowerPoint on the Web

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PPT2HTML gives you full control of PowerPoint HTML output, helps meet Section 508 accessibility requirements
Prep4PDF preserves interactivity in PowerPoint presentations when you convert to PDF
Image Export converts PowerPoint slides to JPG, PNG, GIF, WMF and more

Problem

You need to put PowerPoint presentation on the web so you can share it with others.

Solution

There are several ways to do this. Which is best?

That depends on the PowerPoint features you need to support and the software your site visitors have on their computers. You can:

• Post the presentation on your site as a normal PowerPoint PPT or PPS file
• Convert the presentation to HTML and put the HTML and related files on your site
• Use one of several other methods

Let's look at each option in more detail.

Put a PPT or PPS file on your site

If your presentations use lots of animation, especially the newer techniques in PowerPoint 2002 and later you'll do best to upload the PPT or PPS file to your site and put a link to it on one or more of your other web pages. Visitors will need PowerPoint 2002 / 2003 or the free 2003 Viewer to view the file properly.

You can include a link to the free viewer so people who don't have it can download and install it if they wish.
You'll find links to several viewers here: Download Free PowerPoint Viewers

Note that older versions of PowerPoint or the older PowerPoint 97 viewer and the Mac viewer won't support all the new animations that PowerPoint 2002/2003 are capable of creating.

Note also that media files and other content linked to the PPT won't work in this scenario. If you have linked files, include them and the PPT in a ZIP file or self-extracting ZIP/EXE and instruct visitors to download and unzip the file to a folder on their local hard drive, then play the presentation from there.

See Sounds/Movies don't play, images disappear or links break when I move or email a presentation to learn more about creating workable links in PowerPoint.

Convert the presentation to HTML

Another approach to putting PowerPoint content on the web is converting it to HTML and putting it on your site. There are several ways of converting PPT to HTML.

• PowerPoint's own Save As Web Page or Publish as Web Page commands (under the File menu; specifics depend on which version of PPT you use). See the following PowerPoint FAQ entries for more information.
• Our PPT2HTML PowerPoint to HTML converter add-in doesn't support animation, but gives you a lot more control over the appearance of the HTML you make from PowerPoint, lets you meet ADA/Section 508 requirements more easily and allows you to make HTML that's compatible with a wider variety of browsers.

Note that if you post PowerPoint's own HTML, anyone who can view your web site can also use PowerPoint's File, Open command and type in your presentation's URL to open your presentation directly into their copy of PowerPoint, just as though you'd posted the PPT or PPS file on your site. If you want to limit this ability, delete the files OLEDATA.MSO and PRES.XML from the site.

Other options

• Convert to Flash and embed the result in a web page; there are several add-ins and/or external programs that do this. Search this site for Flash to find several examples.
• Record your presentation using TechSmith's Camtasia or other similar products; save the result as a movie or Flash file and embed that in an HTML page or link to it from one.
• Convert to Adobe Acrobat PDF; PDF support for animations is weak and it lacks some of the other presentation features that PowerPoint offers, but many more of your site visitors will have the free Acrobat Reader required to view PDFs; PDFs are more easily secured, and generally do a better job with text and graphics than PPT or HTML files. Search this site for PDF or try our Prep4PDF PowerPoint add-in to learn more.

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

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