"How to" Guideline series is coordinated by Helen Mongan-Rallis of the Education Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions to improve these guidelines please me at e-mail hrallis@d.umn.edu.

How To Save a Power Point Presentation as HTML

For use with versions of PowerPoint prior to PowerPoint 2000 or 2001

(by Helen Rallis)

Purpose

To guide you in using the Power Point "Save as HTML Wizard." This will enable you to convert you Power Point Presentation to a form (HTML) that can posted on a web site.

Overview of topics in these guidelines

1. Create Power Point presentation
2. Save as HTML
3. Uploading & linking to your HTML presentation to the Web

Create Power Point presentation

1. Create your Power Point presentation and save it as a regular presentation (from the menu bar, choose File > Save)
2. When you have your presentation in its final form (ready to convert to HTML and publish to the web), save one last time in regular format.

Save as HTML

When you save a set of PowerPoint slides as a web page, PowerPoint will create one web page that serves as the starting point for the presentation (it will be named whateveryoucalledit.htm). It will also create a folder to accompany this page. This folder will contain all the "pieces" needed to have the slides work -- i.e: the supporting elements of your Web presentation (slides, graphics, navigation). To view a Web presentation in a browser, open the main filename.htm file. When you upload your presentation to a web page, it is important for you to upload both the main web page (that has the file extention .htm or .html) and the file.

1. From File menu, select "Save as a web page". This will open up the dialog box that gives you choices about:
• Format in which to save it: since you already chose the option "save as a web page" this will be the choice that is already made, but you can choose other options from the drop down menu.
• Where to save the page and accompanying files. Navigate to where you would like to store this on your computer (usually this will be in the folder that contain your web site).
• Web options -click on the button for web options: Usually it if fine to leave these at the default settings, but you can take a look at the options here and make changes if you are a more advanced user and know that you need something different other than the default settings.
2. Each step in the wizard is shown by a small box with the name of the step. Example, the first step is layout selection.
   
   
   
   
3. To begin working on the first step, click in the box next to first stage, namely "layout selection." This will cause the box to turn green and will give your choices in the adjacent window. Once you have made your selection, click the "Next" button to move to the next stage.
4. Layout selection: This asks you which page style you would like. Select "standard."
5. Graphic type: Choose between GIF or JPEG.
   • GIF: Select if your slides contain only text and drawings (e.g. clip art, graphs). GIF format displays only 256 colors, which is all that is needed for text and drawings.
   • JPEG: Select this if your presentation contains any photographs (as JPEG allows you to show a much wider range of colors than GIF format)
   • If you choose JPEG, you will also be asked what kind of compression your would like. The higher the quality, the longer the file will take to load (so which you choose depends on how big your presentation is and the needs of the end users).
     
     
     
     
6. Graphic size: Usually it's best to choose 600 by 800, 3/4 width of screen, because this enables most users to see the whole slide on their computer screen (if you save at full size, users may have to scroll back and forth across the screen to see the slide -- which is very irritating and time consuming!)
7. Information Page:
   • Enter your e-mail address
   • The home page of the site in which the presentation is saved (not your main home page -- if you do this, then the user is taken all the way back to your main home page and has to navigate back to the page/directory in which they were working before choosing to view your Power Point slides).
   • Any other information about your and/or about the presentation itself (here you can include a brief abstract/description of what the presentation is about)
   • If you want to allow users to download your presentation to their computer, check the "Download original presentation" button. This gives them a your presentation (copies it to their computer) which enables them to show it as a presentation from their computer, to print the presentation in different formats (e.g. 6 per page, notes page view, etc). This latter function is especially useful if you want students to be able to print out your notes pages, or if you want to save paper and printing costs by letting them print 6 slides per page). It also means they can change the presentation and use it for their own needs.
8. Colors and Buttons:
   • The first screen asks you to select colors. It's best to use browser colors (users know what to expect then).
   • The next screen asks you to select button style. Any one works -- it's a personal preference.
9. Layout Options:
   • Layout (position of buttons): I recommend choosing "top" so that users can find the buttons easily. This is especially important if they have small monitors (if you have buttons at the right side or bottom they may not be visible to the user).
   • Slide notes: If your presentation includes slide notes, and if you would like users to be able to see these (and download them), check the "include slide notes" box.
     
     
     
10. Create HTML folder in: After the layout options stage (above), when you click the "next" button you will be prompted to create a folder for your presentation and to give this folder a name. To do this:
    • Click on the "select" button
    • In the box that appears, navigate to the folder in which you want to save your presentation (usually this will be in your web site folder). I recommend creating a folder in your web site specifically for Power Point presentations (I call it "PP"). Choose this folder, and then type in the name of the subfolder for the presentation you are creating (e.g. TeachingInternet). This should be one word, no spaces. Once you have made this selection, the path showing where your presentation is saved will appear in the dialog box. Example, the graphic below shows that I have created an HTML folder for my TeachingInternet presentation into the educ5413 file (which is in my web pages file) on my Macintosh hard drive:
      
      
      
      
11. Finish: Click on the "finish" button. Your presentation will now be saved as HTML. This will take a few minutes. What happens is the Power Point program takes each slide from your presentation and creates 2 documents for it (one is a picture of the page, the other is a page with the html code for that page). When it is done, the folder that you created will contain one page (called "index.html") plus all the other html & jpg/gif documents.

Uploading & linking to your HTML presentation to the Web

Your presentation is all in one folder (see step 11 above). To enable people to view it on the web, you need to upload the whole folder to your web account, and usually link it to your home page (or some other page) so that users can access it. To do this:

1. Upload the whole folder (using Fetch or WS-FTP whatever method you use for uploading files). Example: I would upload my whole TeachingInternet folder. Make sure to upload it into the correct location on your web site (as described earlier, I have all my Power Point Presentations in a folder called PP in my web site folder).
2. To link to the presentation, enter the URL of the folder (just as you would enter the URL of any page to which you want to link). Because your Power Point presentation folder has an index.html file within it, just entering the folder name in the URL will automatically launch your presentation index page.

See example of a presentation saved as HTML using PowerPoint98.

For other guidelines on using Power Point go to:

• Introduction to Power Point (http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/PP/PP1.html)
• Intermediate Power Point Guidelines (http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/PP/PP2.html)
• Creating a Power Point Slide Show (http://www.d.umn.edu/~hrallis/guides/PP/slideshow.html)

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