Digital Workshop

I have a powerpoint slideshow (.pps file) that I want to use as part of a bigger training course. This does not seem to be supported with a browser object or a doc view object. I have tried it both way and my machine locks up whenever I try and view it.

Can powerpoint pps files be viewed through Opus? Is there a trick to making them work?

Thanks in advance
Dave

Provided you have PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer on your system it should work in the DocView.

You may find it simpler and more portable to recreate the PowerPoint presentation in Opus itself. That way your end users will not need to have PowerPoint installed.

If you want to convert your PowerPoint slide show to Opus, one way to do this quickly is to export the slides from PowerPoint as Images from the file drop down menu in PowerPoint and then use the resulting images as either page backgrounds in Opus or use them in a slide object in Opus.

If you use this method, when saving the images from PowerPoint use a lossless format such as PNG, BMP or TIFF. This will help maintain the highest quality.

Hope this helps

Brenden Knifton

Hi
Thanks for the ideas.

I have tried to use doc view with the PPS file and it still locks up. I do have PowerPoint installed and I can run the PPs file locally on my computer through file manager with no problem. Not sure why I cannot get it to work in Opus.

I like the suggestion to convert PPT into Opus and see some uses for this. Unfortunately, in this case the PPS has a great deal of animation so this method would probably not work.

Thanks again and if there are any other ideas to get this to work I would be glad to hear them.

Dave

You could always have a screencasting tool convert your PowerPoint file into either an AVI or SWF file and then play that with Opus, unless you PowerPoint file is really interactive. PowerConverter ($400?) does an excellent job of converting PowerPoint files, even with animations. Just a thought.

You could perhaps even get opus to launch the powerpoint viewer program, rather than a doc view?
Run Powerpoint in it's own viewer and it will be happiest I would think!

You can then exit the powerpoint file after the last slide and drop back into Opus...

also theres a review here.. a bit old now and not yet updated!

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerp ... natus.html

Thanks for the ideas and the interesting article. I have converted the PPS to swf using Articulate and this worked but it messed up the animations a little. I will have to play around and try and fix it. I will also try your idea of opening the PPT viewer as that might give me the best results if it works.

Thanks again
Dave