How can I programmatically open and save a PowerPoint presentation as HTML/JPEG in C# or Perl?

Question

I am looking for a code snippet that does just this, preferably in C# or even Perl.

I hope this not a big task ;)

Answer 1

The following will open C:\\presentation1.ppt and save the slides as C:\\Presentation1\\slide1.jpg etc.

If you need to get the interop assembly, it is available under 'Tools' in the Office install program, or you can download it from here (office 2003) . You should be able to find the links for other versions from there if you have a newer version of office.

using Microsoft.Office.Core;
using PowerPoint = Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint;

namespace PPInterop
{
  class Program
  {
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var app = new PowerPoint.Application();

        var pres = app.Presentations;

        var file = pres.Open(@"C:\Presentation1.ppt", MsoTriState.msoTrue, MsoTriState.msoTrue, MsoTriState.msoFalse);

        file.SaveCopyAs(@"C:\presentation1.jpg", Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint.PpSaveAsFileType.ppSaveAsJPG, MsoTriState.msoTrue);
    }
  }
}

Edit: Sinan's version using export looks to be a bit better option since you can specify an output resolution. For C#, change the last line above to:

file.Export(@"C:\presentation1.jpg", "JPG", 1024, 768);

Answer 2

As Kev points out, don't use this on a web server. However, the following Perl script is perfectly fine for offline file conversion etc:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Win32::OLE;
use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft PowerPoint';
$Win32::OLE::Warn = 3;

use File::Basename;
use File::Spec::Functions qw( catfile );

my $EXPORT_DIR = catfile $ENV{TEMP}, 'ppt';

my ($ppt) = @ARGV;
defined $ppt or do {
    my $progname = fileparse $0;
    warn "Usage: $progname output_filename\n";
    exit 1;
};

my $app = get_powerpoint();
$app->{Visible} = 1;

my $presentation = $app->Presentations->Open($ppt);
die "Could not open '$ppt'\n" unless $presentation;

$presentation->Export(
    catfile( $EXPORT_DIR, basename $ppt ),
    'JPG',
    1024,
    768,
);

sub get_powerpoint {
    my $app;
    eval { $app = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('PowerPoint.Application') };
    die "$@\n" if $@;

    unless(defined $app) {
        $app = Win32::OLE->new('PowerPoint.Application',
            sub { $_[0]->Quit }
        ) or die sprintf(
            "Cannot start PowerPoint: '%s'\n", Win32::OLE->LastError
        );
    }
    return $app;
}