There are a variety of reasons that you may find yourself needing to extract all the media content (video, audio, pictures) from a PowerPoint presentation. This process can be especially cumbersome if you have a large presentation, where saving video from slides one at a time is a daunting prospect. Here is a cool hack if you find yourself in this position. By the way, this trick will extract pretty much all content, so even if you aren’t looking for media perse, you will find this interesting. Before we jump in, thank you to Taylor for having this question in PowerPoint Advanced training last week and inspiring this byte.

File Name Extensions

First thing’s first! This trick will be a lot easier if you have your file extensions visible. If they are not already (or if you are not sure), here is what you can do:

1. Open up any folder, or visit your File Explorer in your task bar.

2. Click in the View button at the top. This will pop out the ribbon in File Explorer (yes, there is a ribbon in here! I want to do a byte on this too!)

3. In the Show/Hide group in the View tab, make sure that the box next to File name extensions is checked.

Duplicate File (optional)

This is optional, but we will be changing the file extension next… so if this is your first time and this is an important PowerPoint presentation, I would recommend duplicating it so you have an original version in case something goes awry.

Changing File Extensions

Here is the PowerPoint file, with some media attached. Now that we have turned extensions on, you can see the extension is .pptx.

If you are working with an older file, the extension may read as .ppt. If this is the case, you will need to resave it as the file type Powerpoint Presentation to bring it up to date (more about this here).

1. Click on top of the name of your file to highlight it, or right click and select rename.  Instead of renaming the file, however, we are going to change the extension.

2. At the end of the title, change the extension from .pptx to:  .pptx.zip

It will look like this:

3. Press Enter. You will receive a warning message. Click Yes.

Note: You can always change the file extension back to .pptx the same way.

New File Appearance and Behavior

The appearance of the file changes. At initial glance, it looks like a normal zip file.

Double click on it, however, and you will find a variety of folders. Select ppt.

Here are the “guts” of your Powerpoint…  including a file called media.

Inside the Media file are all the images and videos, including any slideshow recordings you have made that are tied in to your PowerPoint.

Who knew it would be so easy to extract all this information?

Thoughts?

What do you think, will this help you with any of your projects, or did you find it interesting to see the “guts” of your PowerPoint presentation?

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser