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We often see beautiful pictures being passed around in PowerPoint files. It's not difficult to copy a single image for other purposes.
A friend has sent me a beautiful collection of slides from Switzerland which I can only open using PowerPoint Viewer. I would like to use one of these pictures on my desktop in the center with all the usual icons around it on a black background. However, PowerPoint does not let me send one of the pictures by e-mail to myself in order to reduce it and then use it on the desktop. I checked everything I could to find a solution without success. Would you have any idea on how to do this ?
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The good news is that anything you see on your screen can be copied, so absolutely we can do this.
How you do it depends on whether or not you have PowerPoint yourself.
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There are typically two types of PowerPoint presentations that are forwarded around: "PPT" and "PPS":
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PPT (for PowerPoinT) files are the original PowerPoint presentation. Double click on that and if you have PowerPoint it will open in edit mode.
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PPS (for PowerPoint Show) is a file that can be produced by PowerPoint that, when opened starts PowerPoint or the PowerPoint Viewer in slideshow mode for immediate viewing.
The easiest approach is to open the files in either PowerPoint or OpenOffice's "Impress", which is both free and compatible with PowerPoint (download as part of hOpenOffice).
Simply open the presentation, and navigate to the slide containing the picture you want. At that point, you should be able to right click on the picture and select "Save as Picture...", or copy it to the clipboard and then paste it into Microsoft Paint or another image editing program.
That should get you the highest quality copy available of the original image.
Another approach that is an example of that "anything you see on your screen can be copied" statement is this: while viewing the slideshow, preferably full screen, when the slide appears that has the image you want, press the PrntScrn button on your keyboard.
You've just taken a screen shot. You've just taken a picture, a copy, of your computer screen and placed it into the clipboard.
Now fire up Microsoft Paint, or your favorite image editing program, and paste that image into the program and then save it in whatever format is appropriate (probably .jpg).
This is actually a pretty handy way to take copies of things that aren't easily copy-able, but still easily visible. In fact, it's one reason that all the techniques to prevent copying images on the web are pretty futile, since a single screen capture can do the job.
The downside is typically quality: a screen shot is a picture of the screen. If you have a 1024x768 screen, then your copy will be 1024x768, even if the original picture, had you been able to access it, were much higher resolution.
But with today's larger screens, and depending on what your intended use it - like, say, a desktop background - this limitation is often acceptable.
Article C3805 - July 11, 2009 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
July 15, 2009 10:12 AM
An addition to Mark's and Al's comments: If you have PowerPoint installed, you don't need to change the extension from PPS to PPT. Just open PowerPoint, drag the PPS file into it and you'll have the file in edit mode. Maybe this works with OpenOffice's Impress too.
July 15, 2009 10:23 AM
Another way to retrieve multimedia files from a PP file is to open it with PowerPoint and save it as a Web page (not single file). This will create an HTML file itself plus a folder with all its content related files, such as images, sounds, etc. Then one can keep or ditch the ones they want, then delete all the rest.
November 21, 2010 1:44 PM
Leo, thanks for the simple "recipe" for capturing the pictures out of Powerpoint presentations. The extra challenge I presented myself was realizing where to click on my original slide to capture the portion of it I wanted to save. Though the slide looked like a single "page", the moment I clicked on the slide the various elements became evident. After playing with the slide for a moment I was able to capture just exactly what I wanted. Excellent guidance!
September 25, 2011 11:57 AM
How can I make a disc of an email of a very long Christmas card I received in power point, it has video and sound,I've tried everything I can think of. When I open it up it starts right away to play. I've tried to click right but no luck when it is playing. Any help would be helpful. Thank you Mary
November 23, 2011 8:37 AM
It should be pointed out that photographs are copyrighted works of art, and other aspects of Powerpoint presentations may be copyrighted as well. Copying them is illegal without permission of the photographer / author, unless the use falls within the "fair use" guidelines of copyright law. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.
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