Handling Microsoft PowerPoint file format

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Handling Microsoft PowerPoint (file format)

This page discusses various available options for working with "Microsoft PowerPoint":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PowerPoint#File_formats documents in your Qt application. Please also read the general considerations outlined on the Handling Document Formats page.

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One needs to distinguish between two different formats (this page deals with both of them):

table{width:95%;margin-left:2.5%}.
| |. Legacy "PowerPoint Presentation" format |. "Office Open XML Presentation" format |
| classification: | binary | XML-based |
| main filename extension: | {font:1em monospace}.ppt | {font-family:monospace}.pptx |
| main internet media type: | {font:0.9em monospace}application/vnd.ms-powerpoint | {font:0.9em monospace}application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation |
| native format of PowerPoint: | until PowerPoint 2003 | since PowerPoint 2007 |

Reading / Writing

Using PowerPoint itself

If you are exclusively targeting the Windows platform and Microsoft PowerPoint will be installed on all target machines, then you can use "Qt’s ActiveX framework":http://doc.qt.io/qt-4.8/activeqt.html to access PowerPoint’s .ppt and .pptx processing functionality through OLE automation. For an introductory code example (and a way to list the API provided by the PowerPoint COM object), consult "this how to":http://wiki.qt.io/Using_ActiveX_Object_in_QT (focuses on Microsoft Excel, but it works the same way for PowerPoint).

table{width:95%;margin-left:2.5%}.
| |. DLL file name |. COM object name |. platforms |. license |
| "Microsoft PowerPoint":http://office.microsoft.com/powerpoint/ | ? | {font-family:monospace}PowerPoint.Application | Windows | {color:#458}commercial |

Using independent parser/writer libraries

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table{width:95%;margin-left:2.5%}.
| |. API |. {font-family:monospace}.ppt |. {font-family:monospace}.pptx |. reading |. writing |. platforms |_. license |
| "…":http://… | … | … | … | … | … | … | … |

Using manual XML processing

Files using the XML-based (.pptx) format could be processed using Qt's XML handling classes (see Handling Document Formats).

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Using batch conversion tools

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Rendering

Using PowerPoint itself

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Interactive Viewing

Using PowerPoint itself

p{border:dashed 1px #a94;background:#fbf3dd;color:#530;padding:2pt 4pt;font-size:0.9em;line-height:150%;font-style:italic}. TODO: If you know whether PowerPoint provides a "viewer" ActiveX control that can be embedded in a Qt application through ActiveQT, please fill out this section (include links to relevant resources!)

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Manual solution

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See Also

• Handling Document Formats
  • other Microsoft Office formats:
    • Microsoft Word
    • Microsoft Excel
  • other "Presentation" document formats:
    • OpenDocument Presentation