Is it possible to import a powerpoint presentation if powerpoint isn't installed?

[precise_intuition16B8]

I'm just setting up some projects for myself as exercises. I have a few Google Slides presentations exported as powerpoint presentations. I have Captivate on a Mac. I have Powerpoint on a windows machine. Do I need to have a running version of Powerpoint on the mac in order to import the presentation to Captivate?

Is there an alternate workflow? GSlides exports a PPTX file. Powerpoint could probably resave it as a PPT if that helps, and I gather it's possible to just import the assets from the ppt without actually trying to import the slides. As an exercise, that's totally fine. 

[Lilybiri]

My recommendation is different. I would unzip the PPTX file, because it is a zipped folder. Extract the assets you want to use and import them in a library of a new Captivate project. Recreate the project in Captivate, using the assets and the PPT as storyboard. You'll end up with a real Captivate project, without the many limiations of imported PPT slides. An imported PPT slide is in fact a movie slide (based on SWF technology) where you cannot control the individual items at all. When published the slides will be made ready for HTML5. 

[precise_intuition16B8]

Thanks, Lilybiri. I'll look at that when I get home tonight. That sounds like the best approach.

I was running into a roadblock on the Mac where it wouldn't import the PPTX file without powerpoint being installed, but if I had gotten as far as importing it and then found it was a flattened slide I'd have been pretty disappointed.

[Lilybiri]

Understood you wanted exercises. You would have been frustrated if you just imported PPT-slides. I love Captivate for its multitude of features, but I have never used PPT import.

[precise_intuition16B8]

The process worked very well as a means of going from gslides to pptx to Captivate with enough work to turn the whole process into muscle memory. And my partner has over a year's worth of slide decks and quizes in his google classrooms so there's plenty of material to practice with. The next step would be to recreate the accompanying quizes. Given the nature of google's slides and forms being two separate things, it's probably a useful project to just save the slides as powerpoint decks and then recreate the quizes in Captivate. There are a lot of teachers around with over a year's worth of content that they ought to archive.

[Lilybiri]

The most popular topic on my blog is 'Quizzing'.  I have a pdf with links to all the posts about quizzes, but need to update it again (have been adding new articles). It may be useful, I tried to split up between in-depth exploration of the default Quiz design, and possible tweaks to those defaults. Have a look at:

Quiz Resources - eLearning (adobe.com)

Besides Quizzes, Timeline and Theme are two very important topics in Captivate. If you are in for responsive desing, add Fluid Boxes workflow as 4th topic.

See: http://blog.lilybiri.com/challenges-for-starters

[MESunderlin]

Can you give slightly more details hete on the process?  I have a Google Slides Presentation that I want to use as the basis for a Captivate video self study course.  I unzipped the pptx .. tried an import of one of the .xml files of one of the slides, but that did not work.

A few more details or hints would be very much apprecviatted!!!! 

[RodWard]

Captivate does flatten PPT slides into a single graphic.  That's just the way it works.  If you want to have the ability to animate entrance of objects on the slides separately on the timeline then you need to import the images and other audio assets separately and insert them into Captivate as native Cp objects.

Captivate will not accept the XML file from a PPTX file.  That file is just describing how to display all the objects on the slide but for PowerPoint only.  Captivate is an entirely different structure.

[Lilybiri]

When I often mention that you better unzip the PPT file (maybe also possible for your Google presentation) and extract the assets,  I  mean assets like audio, graphics. A XML file is something totally different, it is used for multiple purposes (Captivate uses XML for effects) but  native to the application. You cannot do anything with a XML file from PPT in Captivate.

When you have the usable asseets, import them to the Project library of a new Captivate project and build your slides from scratch. The presentation can serve as a starting storyboard, but know that a presentation has a completely different goal from an eLearning asset. A presentation is meant to be used and controlled by the presenter, in the first place in a syncrhonized way. eLearning is meant to be used by learners, mostly asynchronous and needs a completely different mindset.

[MESunderlin]

It sounds like ... the existing Google Slide deck I have .. is not of much use. 😞 I had hoped, to be able to use it as the basis for my course ... but from what I am reading, my best bet is to create new slides in Captivate and cut and paste the text from Google slides and add in my narration via Captivate.

If there is any shorter route, please let me know.

p.s. I do not have a copy of Power Point. 

[Lilybiri]

Careful with copy/paste text! I don't know how text styles are treated in Google presentations, but Captivate themes have object styles for text containers. You need to paste unformatted text. Read more about Object styles:

http://blog.lilybiri.com/object-styles-in-a-theme

Even imported PPT slides are not very useful IMO.

[precise_intuition16B8]

In my particular experience I *couldn't* import a PPTX file into Captivate because Captivate relies on powerpoint to do the work and my copy of powerpoint is on a different computer. However, If you are trying to just import a powerpoint file then you don't need to unzip it. And, as Rod says, Captivate evidently just flattens the slides from a PPT file. Not sure if that's also what happens if the file is a PPTX format. PPTX is XML-based.

If you unzip the PPTX file there's a Media folder inside the PPT folder. That's where you'll find your media that you can then import into your captivate project. This doesn't really save you much time or effort. If you have original source assets you probably wouldn't need to bother with this.

If I were trying to recreate a powerpoint or gslides project I might try importing the entire PPTX file and then going through it and rebuilding only the slides that needed the individual assets. You end up using a combination of both approaches.

[MESunderlin]

In my case, I also do not have Power Point on my computer.  What I have, is a Google Slide Deck as the outline of the course I want to build. Ideally, I would import the slides from Google, add narration and someother interactions, and have a self study course.

it sounds like, as noted earlier, what I'll need to do is cut / paste from my Google Slides to Captivate, one slide at a time.  So be it.  It's not that long a slide deck ... but if you have any tips to do this in a faster, more automated way, I'd appreciate it!