Using PowerPoint Presentations in Other Applications

If you're like most people, most of the time you'll bring Word and Excel content or tools into your PowerPoint slides. But there might be times when you'll want to use PowerPoint content and slides in Word and Excel as well. Fortunately, you can do that.

You can add any PowerPoint slide contentgraphics, organization charts , text boxesto a Word document or Excel worksheet by copying and pasting it into the Word or Excel file. You can also link the pasted content, as discussed earlier in this chapter, so that changes to the PowerPoint content are reflected in the Word or Excel target.

Another way to use PowerPoint content in other applications is to use entire slides. You can save an individual slide in several common graphic file formats, including GIF, TIF, JPG, PNG, and BMP. You can then insert it as a graphic in any Word or Excel document.

To save a PowerPoint slide as a graphic file, follow these steps:

1. Select the slide you want to save as a graphic.

2. Choose File, Save As to open the Save As dialog box (see Figure 19.10).

   Figure 19.10. Before saving the file, it pays to check which formats are acceptable to your target application. Choose the most commonly used formats for greatest usability.

   

3. In the Save as Type list, scroll through the formats and select a graphic file format such as JPG, TIF, GIF, or BMP.

   TIP

   It's a good idea to experiment with the graphic format you choose because the quality and results can vary. For example, high- color presentations don't look good when saved as GIFs because they are reduced to 256 colors. And JPG compression could make your presentation look grainy. Saving as a BMP or TIF creates the best quality output, at the expense of large file size.

   TIP

   If you will be using the graphic on a Web site, save it in GIF format. This format is acceptable to most Web design programs and creates small files, which is desirable for creating fast-loading Web pages.

4. Type a name for your file in the File Name box.

5. Click Save. PowerPoint asks whether you want to export every slide in the presentation or just the selected slide.

6. Click Current Slide Only, which exports (saves) only the selected slide.

When you save a slide as a graphic, use the Insert, Picture command in Word or Excel to insert the graphic. You can size and format the graphic using the Picture toolbar.