Import PowerPoint

The goal of this feature is to capture text 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 (see tips below). Versions prior to 1.8 may require some code tweaking for PowerwerPoint 2003 onward. (We've added instructions for a minor tweak to import 2003 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

Create webpage in MS 2003 versions of PowerPoint into 1.9

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. Using Windows Explorer or your favorite program
   • Zip the new folder

Create webpage in MS 2000 versions of PowerPoint into earlier versions

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. Using Windows Explorer or your favorite program
   • Make sure all the files are in one folder by themselves, then
   • Zip the new folder that contains just the webpage files

Moodle instructions

1. How to import the PowerPoint in Moodle
   • Add a Lesson activity to a course, set the settings, save settings
   • Select "Import PowerPoint"
   • Use the browse button to select the ziped file that contains the webpage folder
   • Select "Continue"
   • Start editing the branch pages

Tips

1. Keep it simple, text only is best
   • No page numbers (see masterslide)
   • No text boxes with graphic or filled backgrounds
   • Masterslide content will not import, but delete all the footers
   • Watermarks and text over graphics is probably not a good idea
   • It will import some bullet formats but not all
   • It probably does not like "special characters" (any non-english letters)
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 in pre 1.8 Moodle version nor
   • some non english presentations due to characters-fonts
   • Double check your PowerPoint version.
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 consistent
   • 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.

1. A form post with a zip file called ImportPPT_Stuff. This file contains a simple 3 slide PowerPoint presentation and another zip file of the Web Page folder that the presentation created. The PowerPoint was 2003 SP-2. Once "Stuff" is unpacked, the "ImportPPT_2003_test_1_files.zip" worked in demo.moodle.org which was Moodle 1.9 in May 2008.

Tweak for PowerPoint 2003

No tweaks are necessary if you are importing PowerPoint 2003 into 1.9.

Moodle 1.6

Plantilla:Moodle 1.6 Here are the steps to import a PowerPoint presentation into a Moodle lesson. Tested with Moodle 1.6 and 1.7 and Powerpoint 2003 (MS Office 2003) as given by Joseph Rézeau in the Lesson Forum.

ImportPPT.php change

If you want to use presentations made with PowerPoint 2003 you'll have to make a minor change in file moodle\mod\lesson\importppt.php around line 135.

Replace: unzip_file($base.$zipfile, $base, false)

with: unzip_file($base.$zipfile, $base.$dirname, false);

Instructions

The instructions below works in Moodle 1.6 and 1.7 and are the same for presentations created with versions of PowerPoint prior to MS Office 2003. Remember to make the code adjustment in ImportPPT if you wish only to use PowerPoint 2003.

1. Create a PowerPoint presentation called e.g. myPresentation.ppt (possiby including embedded images).
2. Save your PowerPoint presentation as html pages
3. PowerPoint will create (in your chosen destination):
   1. one myPresentation.htm file
   2. one myPresentation_files folder (this folder would be called myPresentation_fichiers with a French version of Windows, etc.)
4. Then zip the entire myPresentation_files folder to a myPresentation_files.zip file. You do not need the myPresentation.htm file.
5. In your Moodle course, in Edit mode, Add an activity, Add a lesson, give it a name and set its parameters.
6. On the following screen you are given a choice of: What would you like to do first?
   1. Import questions
   2. Import PowerPoint
   3. Add a Branch Table
   4. Add a Question Page
7. Select Import PowerPoint. On the next screen, upload the myPresentation_files.zip file. Et voila!

The above instructions works in Moodle 1.6 and 1.7 without any changes for presentations created with versions of PowerPoint prior to MS Office 2003. Remember to make the code adjustment in ImportPPT if you wish only to use PowerPoint 2003.

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 a few slides need to be imported and something like a screen capture of the slide image will work. Experienced users 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 Insert image

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 picture process Insert image

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
• Lesson Forum thread with a sample zip to import and PowerPoint for download as "ImportPPT_Stuff" zip file.
• Moodle docs on PowerPoint
• See MDL-15755 for a simple PowerPoint and a zip file that was created using the PowerPoint. The zip file is ready to be imported. Useful to see if other parts of a Moodle site are working and to see an example of what does work. Try importing this via demo.moodle.org .
• See MDL-5655 for a very rough and not complete attempt at a hack to import OOImpress webpages.
• See MDL-10513 for a process to import a series of images in file order. Plus a hack to change Lesson code to show the new process. This could be a more elegant solution but file names determine the page order (img11 will come before img2).