PowerPoint to HTML conversion using C# and Microsoft Office API

A PowerPoint presentation can only be viewed either in Microsoft PowerPoint or in Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer. So if you are going to upload a PowerPoint presentation in your web site, then at least one of these two products must be installed in the user’s machine to view this PowerPoint presentation.
 

To overcome this limitation, you can convert the PowerPoint presentation to the HTML format and finally you can embed the generated HTML file in your web pages. So with this approach you can achieve following:

· The presentation can be embedded inside your web pages

· User will not need to install Microsoft PowerPoint or Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer to view the presentation.

Solution:

If you remember, there is an option in the File Menu of Microsoft PowerPoint:  

File->Save As Web Page
 

This option will save a PowerPoint presentation in HTML format. We can also do this programmatically using C# and Microsoft Office API.

Following DLLs of Microsoft Office API will be required to achieve this functionality:

Interop.Microsoft.Office.Core.dll

Interop.PowerPoint.dll

Interop.Microsoft.Office.Core.dll
 

Use following C# code snippet to achieve this functionality:

//PowerPoint presentation file with full path

string strSourceFile = @“C:\PPT_Presentation.ppt”;

//Give the name and path of the HTML file to be generated

string strDestinationFile = @“C:\HTML_Presentation.htm”;

//Create a PowerPoint Application Object

PowerPoint.Application ppApp = new PowerPoint.Application();

//Create a PowerPoint Presentation object

PowerPoint.Presentation prsPres = ppApp.Presentations.Open(strSourceFile, MsoTriState.msoTrue, MsoTriState.msoFalse, MsoTriState.msoFalse);

//Call the SaveAs method of Presentaion object and specify the format as HTML

prsPres.SaveAs(strDestinationFile, PowerPoint.PpSaveAsFileType.ppSaveAsHTML, MsoTriState.msoTrue);

//Close the Presentation object

prsPres.Close();

//Close the Application object

ppApp.Quit();

Now look on second parameter of the “SaveAs” method, basically it specifies the format in which the PowerPoint presentation will be converted. In the above code it is “PpSaveAsFileType.ppSaveAsHTML”, means the PowerPoint presentation will be converted to HTML format. PpSaveAsFileType is an enum type which has following values:

· ppSaveAsAddIn

· ppSaveAsBMP

· ppSaveAsDefault

· ppSaveAsEMF

· ppSaveAsGIF

· ppSaveAsHTML

· ppSaveAsHTMLDual

· ppSaveAsHTMLv3

· ppSaveAsJPG

· ppSaveAsMetaFile

· ppSaveAsPNG

· ppSaveAsPowerPoint3

· ppSaveAsPowerPoint4

· ppSaveAsPowerPoint4FarEast

· ppSaveAsPowerPoint7

· ppSaveAsPresentation

· ppSaveAsPresForReview

· ppSaveAsRTF

· ppSaveAsShow

· ppSaveAsTemplate

· ppSaveAsTIF

· ppSaveAsWebArchive
 

So you can convert the PowerPoint Presentation to some other formats also, you just need to modify the value of the second parameter in the “SaveAs” method.