Using the PowerPoint Viewer

The PowerPoint Viewer ( pptview.exe ) lets people view a PowerPoint presentation when they don't have PowerPoint installed on their computers. You can freely distribute the Viewer without any license fee. Using Package for CD, you have the option of including the Viewer in your presentation package.

To learn more about how to use Package for CD and how it works with the PowerPoint Viewer, see "Packaging Presentations onto a CD," the previous section in this chapter, p. 193 .

CAUTION

PowerPoint Viewer will play all PowerPoint content except linked and embedded objects and scripting.

To run the Viewer, follow these steps:

1. Double-click pptview.exe from within Windows Explorer. Figure 9.22 illustrates the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer dialog box.

   Figure 9.22. The PowerPoint Viewer lets you deliver slideshows on computers without PowerPoint.

   

2. Navigate to the presentation you want to view or enter its name in the File Name field.

3. Click Open to start the show.

4. When the show ends, the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer dialog box returns. Click Cancel to close it.

TIP

PowerPoint Viewer plays PowerPoint presentations created only with versions of PowerPoint going back to PowerPoint 97. If you have a presentation created in PowerPoint 95 or earlier and want to play it in the PowerPoint Viewer, first open the presentation in this version of PowerPoint and then save it.