PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: How to Extract Audio & Images from a Presentation

by AJ George

As an eLearning developer, sometimes you're given a completed PowerPoint project and told to "fix it" or you need to use it in another program (such as Captivate). Often the presentation is given to you as a .ppt or .pptx file and does not have separate audio or image files.

While there is no way from within PowerPoint to directly extract audio and image files from a presentation, there is a workaround.

Note: In this scenario, your working file must have a PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 file extension (.pptx, .ppsx, .pptm, .ppsm or .potm)

1. With the PowerPoint presentation closed, right-click the file and choose Rename.
   
   
2. Change the name of the presentation by adding a .zip to the end of it. (e.g. filename.pptx.zip).
   
   
3. Click Yes if the following dialog box appears after changing the name.
   
   
   
   The renamed file will take on the appearance of a zip folder.
   
   
4. Double-click the zip folder to open it.
   
   
   
   
5. Open the ppt folder.
   
   
6. Locate the media folder and drag it (or copy and paste it) elsewhere (your desktop or another folder).
   
   All of the sound and image files used in the presentation will be inside this folder.
   
   
7. Right-click the pptx zip file and choose Rename.
   
   
8. Delete the .zip file extension.
   
   Doing so will allow you to open the file in PowerPoint again.

For an alternate way to do this:

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: How to Extract Audio & Images from a Presentation, Part II

 

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

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Comments

[Mike]

This method isn't just for PowerPoint. It applies to all the recent xml MS and OpenOfflce/LibreOffice formats. If you're interested in that sort of thing, the open formats are much tidier.