Import PowerPoint

The goal of this feature is to capture text and and graphics from a series of MS PowerPoint presentation slides and insert them into the content area of a series of branch tables, as text and images. The title of the page come from the title of the PowerPoint slide. The descriptions on the branch page are blank, so the initial settings will follow the flow control parameter in lesson settings.

Simple text presentations with simple graphic images can be imported without much trouble. It will not import things like underlining but will import some of the simple bullets. At the moment this feature is best used by teachers who want to do an initial lesson outline in MS PowerPoint. Do not expect it to handle the rich outlining and graphics potentials of MS PowerPoint. It does not work with PowerPoint 2003 onward. See tips below.

Remember, a poorly designed course will not magically improve when placed in Moodle. And poorly designed PowerPoint will not improve when it is imported into a Lesson. In other words, a page with 20 bullets and text in a tiny font, might not work on a Lesson page for students or with the importPPT function.

The instructions

1. Create the Web Folder
   • Open the MS PowerPoint presentation
   • In "File" click on "Save as"
   • Change or note "Save In" setting
   • Set Save "file type" pulldown menu to "Web Page"
   • click on "Save"
2. Zip the folder
   • Find the folder you just created
   • Zip the folder with your favorite program
3. In Moodle, import the PowerPoint
   • Create the Lesson, set the settings, save settings
   • Select "Import PowerPoint"
   • Select "Continue"
   • Start editing the branch pages

Tips

1. Keep it simple, text only is best
   • No page numbers
   • No text boxes with graphic or filled backgrounds
   • Don't worry about your masterslide, none of its content will import
   • Watermarks and text over graphics is probably not a good idea
   • It will import some bullet formats but not all
2. Graphic images can be imported as a part of the presentation but
   • Graphic images will have to be moved in the Lesson page
   • More than one graphic image might not always import to a Lesson page
3. Check each page in student view
   • Make sure all your bullets are there
   • Double check your text when there is a lot on a page
   • Did it import the right number of graphic objects
4. Did not import data?
   • Import PowerPoint does not work on PPT 2003 nor
   • some non english presentations due to characters-fonts
5. Want to import a word document as a series of slides in a Moodle Lesson?
   • Read Microsoft's tips on how to create slides from word text (ie MS help page)
   • Hint, use outline feature and only two levels in Word
   • First level is page title, Second level is content
   • Save Word file, then file, import outline in PPT
   • takes a little tweaking in word but it is consistant
   • Then follow the instructions above.

Examples

1. Use PowerPoint as a story board with simple text content and include descriptions for the branch table button. Remember the first line of text in outline view, will be your Lesson page title. So you can also put in the jump for each description as text as a reminder where to set the jumps. After the import into a lesson, go into edit mode. In each page cut and paste the description text from content area to the description areas. Sorry, you can not cut & paste the jump text, so set the jumps and then delete the jump material in content.

1. Edit down a PowerPoint that was designed to run off a CD and import it as the basis of a lesson. Sometimes creating a new PowerPoint is easier than cleaning up an old one.

Legacy method of importing

There is a manual way of adding what looks like an OpenOffice Impress or Microsoft PowerPoint slide to a Lesson page. This is useful when only few slides need to be imported and something like a screen capture of the slide image will work. Experienced user report that depending upon the version of Moodle, the screen refresh rate and the number of slides, this process averages between 2 - 3 minutes per created lesson page.

OpenOffice Impress (OOI)

1 After creating a presentation or importing a PowerPoint
2 Export OOI presentation as web page
3 Make a note of the folder which was created
4 Create a lesson page
5 Use insert an image process Page_content#Image_Insertion

The OOI page will be called something like img1.jpg

6 Tip - create a zip file of selected jpg files and upload and unpack that in the files area

Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT)

1 After creating a web folder (see The instructions above)
2 Create a lesson page
3 Use insert an image process Page_content#Image_Insertion

Look for a file in the web folder called something like slide0001.htm

4 Tip - create a zip file of selected htm files and upload and unpack that in the files area

See also

• Using Moodle Import Powerpoint html to lesson forum discussion