Merge multiple Powerpoint (PPT) files/presentations
Posted on September 19, 2008 at 5:34 am
Looking for a way to merge or join multiple Powerpoint presentations into one presentation file? There’s a cool program called PowerPoint Joiner that will take in a list of Powerpoint files and go through each one of them and combine all the slides into one file.
PowerPoint Joiner is brand new, so it’s not the most user friendly program in the world, but it’s pretty easy to explain how to use it. When you download it, go ahead and unzip it into a new folder.
You’ll see some strange files in there, such as sprintf.js, etc, but don’t worry about all of that. What you need to do is double-click on the file called pptjoin.hta. You should now see a window like this:
In order to join multiple Powerpoint presentations into one file, you have to create a text file with whatever name you want that has the name of all the files you want to combine, each on a separate line. For example, go into the Test Files folder and open the Test.txt file.
Note that the Powerpoint presentations are also in the same directory as the text file. This is required in order for the program to work. So basically, put all your Powerpoint presentations into one directory (or copy them to some new directory just for combining purposes) and create a new text file and put in all the names of the files into the text file. Seem like a lot of work?
Well, there an easy way to create the file in DOS. Go to the command prompt by going to Start, then Run and then typing in CMD. Navigate to the directory where all of your Powerpoint files are stored by typing in CD and the PATH. For example, if you want to go to C:\MyDocs, you would type in CD C:\MyDocs. If it’s one another drive, such as the D drive, you would type CD /D F:\MyDocs.
Now at the prompt, type in the following command to create the text file:
dir /b *.ppt* > my_files.txt
A file called my_files.txt will automatically be created in that directory with the names of all files ending in PPT. You can change the file extension from PPT to create a list of the names of files for any file extension.
The program really should have been written to go through any directory you select automatically, but since it’s in early beta, you have to do all this other stuff. Now click the Browse button and select the text file that you created.
Click the HERE button to combine the Powerpoint files into one file. If you have Office installed, you’ll see the program open while the program is running. Finally, go to the folder with all of your files and you should see a new file called combined.ppt.
That’s it! Hopefully the next version will be a little bit easier to use, but if you are in dire need to combine many Powerpoint presentations into one file, this is your tool! Works with Office 2003 and Office 2007 files. Enjoy!
Other articles you might be interested in include how to insert a PDF into Powerpoint, how to convert a Powerpoint presentation to DVD or Flash, and how to insert a YouTube video into Powerpoint. Source: Ghacks
» Filed Under Free Software Downloads
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6 Responses to “Merge multiple Powerpoint (PPT) files/presentations”
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Combine or merge multiple text files using TXTCollector Says:
[...] I wrote about a program called PowerPoint Joiner that combines multiple Powerpoint files into one, quite useful when working in groups and each individual creates a separate file for their part. [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 5:40 am
Does this re-number the pages for the merged document?
Works perfectly so far, easy to merge multiple PPT files. Thanks!
Thank you! You just saved me a tonne of time and monotonous work.
Doesn’t seem to work with Office 2007! Is there another program that can merge PPT files for 2007?
Another way to merge PowerPoint presentations without needing any additional software is to use the Slide Finder tool in PowerPoint.
Go to the Insert menu and choose Slides from File. Then click Browse and choose the PPT file you want to import. Choose the slides and click Insert or Insert All to add all the slides to the current presentation. This will work for PowerPoint 2007.