How to save your entire Powerpoint presentation to another folder or CD
Some Office features have been there for so long that it’s easy to forget they are there. Most of the coverage is of new features and long standing stuff gets overlooked. And so it was yesterday when I was asked about burning a Powerpoint presentation to a CD – the problem was how to make sure all the links video and audio files were included on the CD with the PPT file.
To me the answer was simple and has been in Powerpoint for a long time. Under the File menu is an option Package for CD … which will do what that gentleman wanted and some more.
Really the menu item label is misleading because the option can do much more than save to a CD. The default settings will create a CD with the currently open presentation and all linked files plus a Powerpoint viewer so you can play the presentation on any computer with Windows ME or later.
The feature goes beyond that and is really an Export function for a Powerpoint presentation and all its linked files. If you click on ‘Copy to Folder’ you can select anywhere on your hard drive, network or external drive to save the presentation to.
Even though you’re not saving to a CD it includes all the same files as you’d get on a ‘Copy to CD’ including, importantly the Autostart files. This means you can save a package to the root folder of a USB key – when you plug it into another computer it should start playing automatically.
One little nuisance is that ‘Copy to Folder’ won’t let you save over an existing presentation package in the same location, which often happens as you revise a presentation and want to update the package version. Instead of a prompt to overwrite (as is usual in Office) you get a blunt notice to save in another location. The alternative is to delete the package manually then save the package to the now empty folder.
The Autoplay settings are controlled under the Options button. You can choose to install the Powerpoint viewer or not and what to do on Autostart.
There are also options to include linked files (defaults on and recommended to leave it that way) and embed fonts (useful and probably best to turn this on just in case it’s needed).
