PPT import into FM

[Pinkham, Jim]

My condolences, Corinne. I'll be interested to hear what others have to
say. I'm about to call it a day and won't be responding over the
weekend, at least, but here's an initial hunch as to how I might go at
it.

1. Confirm that the original content doesn't exist anywhere else first.
If PowerPoint was a destination and not an origin, you might well be in
a better starting position to begin with the original document(s).
2. If PowerPoint is the only source material, my preferred approach
would be to deal with the graphics and text separately.
	A. For the text, (I'm using PowerPoint 2003), choose Send to --
Microsoft Office Word. On the next menu, choose Outline Only
		1. If you have a very clean Word template that contains
only your FM styles, you might be able to copy and paste the text
(non-formatted) from the step above into your Word-to-FM template, apply
the styles in Word, and then bring the text into FM.
		2. Otherwise, I'd select all the text in your new Word
doc (after cleaning up extra spaces, paying heed to special characters,
etc.) and copy and paste your new Word doc content as plain text into,
say, a Notepad file and save that file as plain text, and then import
the plain text into a clean document created from your FM template.
		3. Once the text is in FM, begin applying (or
correcting, as necessary) styles and formatting to conform to your
template.
	B. For the graphics:
		1. If not embedded, set up anchored frames in FM and
begin importing the images by reference from their locations on your
computer or network.
		2. If embedded, there is a PPT macro out there that will
extract images from a presentation. Save the images that result onto
your hard drive or whatever and then refer to Step 1 above. 
			I can't post an attachment to the list and you
might find the macro online over the weekend. The one in my My Documents
folder is titled, "ContainsPictureExtractMacro.ppt". If you get stuck
and need it, contact me off-list, and I'll try to help you next week.
Otherwise, others may be able to propose a better approach -- or perhaps
something similar to "Extracting Images Embedded in Word Documents," an
online resource by Lyn Eggleston that Google should turn up for you.

OPTION B
If you don't need to change the content or formatting from how it is
today in the PowerPoint in the foreseeable future, convert the whole
presentation into a PDF and bring it into Frame a page at a time. There
are also batch tools out there to bring in the PDF en masse, I believe.
Also, if you search the archives, others have described here how to
bring in PDFs, page by page, and they maintain that with keyboard
shortcuts, patience, and persistance, it can be done without losing your
sanity.

Good luck!
Jim

 

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Corinne
Kenney
Sent: Friday, January 08, 2010 4:42 PM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: PPT import into FM

I need to convert about 1200 pages of content that is in power point
into FM9. The PPT pages are currently printed and comprise a training
manual. We want to put everything into FM. What's the least painful
approach to bringing this material into FM. It's pretty graphics
intensive.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Corinne Kenney
OpenTV, Denver CO



      
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