Illustrator CS6 to Powerpoint 2011 (Mac)

[petenic]

Hi All,

Please help, I've been searching for hours trying to find a solution to this and can only find a patch for CS5!

How can you export vectors from Illustrator CS6 to PowerPoint allowing them to be editable in Powerpoint? I've tried every vector format (ai, eps, pdf, wmf, emf and on importing/pasting/paste specialing (which used to work in older versions of Illustrator) but it seems to either rasterize, or fill the bounding box. The shapes themselves are not editable in any form, colouring or otherwise.

Please help!

Thanks

Pete

[Mylenium]

Not sure what you are trying to say. I can only say from the Windows side that this would be perfectly normal - PP never has allowed to edit custom vector graphics beyond transforming or coloring them with the built-in tools, causing them to be rasterized and converted to bitmaps. So unless you mean something completely different, i tend to think what you see is probably normal...

Mylenium

[Doug A Roberts]

this is a powerpoint question rather than an illustrator one, but if you place your EPS you should be able to right-click it, ungroup, and PP will ask you if you want to make it into a microsoft drawing object (or somethingorother). then you can ungroup that and edit the vectors freely.

edit: after playing around with it though, gawd. i wouldn't bother. it doesn't seem to know what illy's curves are and splits them into dozens of tiny straight paths.

[petenic]

Unfortunately not, it used to work but it seems that since we've upgraded to CS6 the compatibilty has gone.

An example would be a map of North America. I've created a vector map, each state is essentially an individual shape so I can select and change colours as required. You used to be able to copy and paste special straight into PP, keeping all shapes individually. Now, copying and pasting, or importing any vector file I seem to get no option to 'Ungroup' the shape. If I change the colour, I lose the transparency and the bounding box fills with the new colour.

It's driving me mad, it used to be possible from CS3. We upgraded to CS6 a while ago and have not needed (fortunately) to do any Powerpoint work since, now we're re-jigging old projects for a client and can't get it done. We haven't upgraded PP, which is why I'm posting in the Illustrator forum.

Appreciate your help guys!

Pete

[sofwares]

Hi,

I hope you this might work for you, vector image in illustrator, i have saved as .tiff, and placed in illustrator, converted to image trace(silhouette) in Color / back & white. and expanded the image trace. Copied converted vector image and paste special as .emf file in power-point, by above method, i can able to recolor(gradient or any single color) as a clip art in power-point silhouette vector.

Thanks and Regards,

Rajendra

[rjc70]

Old post, but seeing this for the first time…

Unfortunately, on the Mac side, it has not been possible (at least in PPT versions 2004 and up) to bring in vector objects (in any format) from Illustrator to PPT and turn it into an editable PPT shape. It will either just come in as if it were a PDF or as a raster image. There are two options to get around this:

1) If you export the Illustrator graphic as an EMF (doesn't matter what version of Illustrator or whether Mac or Windows), then import that into a Windows version of PPT. Then ungroup and you'll have editable PPT graphics that you can recolor/stylize just like a PPT shape. You only need Windows for the import to PPT portion of this, and once you have it in a PPT file, you can move it over to Mac. Yet another example of MS shutting out a capability in the Mac version of Office!

2) If you don't have access to a PC to do this, you can try OpenOffice (Mac) to import EMF files and break apart to create shapes. Then save as a PPT file and open in PPT. However, the resulting shapes I've seen from this method can turn out imperfect, especially if they were small vectors and you blow them up in size. So, okay for small icons, but if you need larger graphics, then method #1 is better.

Hopefully a better method than those two can be found.

[ed----]

A solution is to save the vectors as a PDF file in Illustrator; then convert the PDF into a PPTX in Acrobat Pro.

When you open that PPTX, all the vectors are editable in PowerPoint.

[rjc70]

Thanks for the tip about Acrobat now having that feature. I finally got a chance to try it out, but there's a problem. Curves are converted into just points and straight lines—creating rough shapes—unlike in the other methods above. This is made a little better if I blow up the vectors really huge in Illustrator, but then there are even thousands more points on the shapes in PPT.

Is there something else that needs to be done to get the bezier curves converted to PPT bezier curves? This is done properly in method (1) above, when Illustrator exports as EMF. Why wouldn't Acrobat's export do the same?

I should post this issue to the Acrobat forum as well...

[ed----]

Yes the curves are not properly converted with the Acrobat method.

Using the EMF method with OpenOffice gives better results: the bezier curves are much better, even on small objects.

[Willi Adelberger]

You could open the AI file without conversion in Acrobat Pro and save as PPTX.

This conversion is possible but far away from perfect and not useable in many cases.

[josephs90815652]

No their not.

[davidd16958997]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[Jesus Nieto]

Export to PDF  then to PPT works fine for me (Adobe Acrobat DC 2021 + Powerpoint 2016)
The shapes got to the slide master and the the text boxes to a slide. The most similar to 2 layers you can do in PPT 😉

[pait]

I have found a way!

With the last version of OpenOffice, Illustrator CS6 and Office 2011 for mac:

Save your AI file as .svg instead of .emf, then import it in a OpenOffice presentation, break, and save as .ppt. Forms and curves are perfect!

Hope helps someone!

[rjc70]

Awesome—using SVG does indeed work much better in OpenOffice!

Finally a way to get Illustrator vectors into PPT entirely on a Mac.

Thanks for sharing!

[laduck]

Hi All,

Hoping someone can help. I tried the method above: inserting the svg into openoffice and saving as a PPT. When I try to open in PowerPoint I receive the message, "PowerPoint found a problem with content in the file. PowerPoint can attempt to repair the file. If you trust the source of this file, click repair." I click repair, the file opens, and it is empty—my graphic is gone.

[BomDia2014]

OMG! That works. You are a wizard! I’ve been trying for 1 year to figure out a work-around and the SVG > OpenOffice Presentation > Break > save as PPT works! Thank you thank you thank you! ( I’m using OpenOffice 4.1.1, BTW)

[herrn_matthiasa95780989]

Thanks a lot - also for me! At the end this is the solution.

But: In OpenOffice I must first "umwandeln" the grafic (change, lineout, vectorize): Rightclic, umwandeln, in Kurven. Then save the file as ppt and open it in ppt!

[hopelesser]

‌I've downloaded OpenOffice 4.11 and installed, but do not have the option to save as PPT....

[marianam57166643]

My Open Office doesnt have the option to break when I right click it! Help! Is there a certain version for open office

[emilygcy]

When I try to open OpenOffice it shows error messages saying:

“OpenOffice” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer.

Your security preferences allow installation of only apps from the Mac App Store and identified developers.

How do I resolve this?

[Willi Adelberger]

Change your security settings in the System Preferences.

[deadstk]

There is a way if your a Mac user, although it's a little clunky, it gets the job done

If you have Acrobat Pro for Mac (used v11.0.11) try this:

• Save your vector artwork as a PDF file in illustrator
• Convert the PDF into a PowerPoint (File > Save As Other > Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation)
• Open in PowerPoint, vector will appear to be locked and unselectible.
• Go to edit slide master (View > Master > Slide Master) vector should appear, although it may be behind some text boxes that need to be deleted.
• Select and copy, close Slide Master
• Paste vector graphic on to any slide. You can add fills, scale just like any native PP graphic. Select and right click to "Edit Points" to modify.

You now have a fully editable vector graphic in PowerPoint. At least it works for simple line graphics — have not tried anything more complex.

Good luck.

[hopelesser]

It works to a degree, not all information gets translated. But definitely a good work around. Thx much.

[designbylisag]

Thankyou so much. Had tried everything and this is the only solution that worked for me - legend!