Creating an animated slide show with background audio

Classic
1

Hello all,

I have a PowerPoint file which I would like to turn into an interactive (i.e. the user controls the slides) presentation on my RapidWeaver site with a background audio track included.

What is the best but simplest Stack available that might help me with this task? There seem to be an overwhelming number of options, but many do more complex things than I probably need for this scenario?

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Anthony

2

Hi @antbrad,

There are no ready made stacks that can run an interactive PowerPoint file online. The PPTX file format is proprietary so making a viewer would require Microsoft’s consent. And they won’t give it.

PowerPoint itself stopped supporting publishing PPTX files as online viewable content from version 2019 onwards. The official stance is that Microsoft views SharePoint as the way forward for sharing interactive contents, and PowerPoint can be used as an authoring package for that. But you’ll need an M365 subscription tier that includes SharePoint to do this.

If you happen to subscribe to such a tier, click File > Save As to select M365 SharePoint as the file’s location. Make sure you set the permissions for that SharePoint page so that anyone can view it.

Once the process is done, you can “visit” the presentation by clicking on the SharePoint URL, and the file will display as an interactive website of sorts. Some features from PowerPoint may be missing ,as they’re not supported in SharePoint.

You can then link to this SharePoint location from your own website’s menu, or use something like an iFrame (or a stack that offers similar functionality) to insert that SharePoint location into your webpage.

The only other way to share presentations made in PowerPoint with others, is to publish the file itself to the web. This means that a visitor downloads the file and views it in either the free PowerPoint online viewer (included with every Microsoft 365 subscription, including the free tier) or open it in PowerPoint on their local machine (if they own that app).

Here’s how:

  1. Open the PowerPoint file in PowerPoint and save the file to your OneDrive storage (included in you Microsoft 365 sub)
  2. In PowerPoint, click the Share tab
  3. Next, click Get a link from the options presented to you
  4. Finally, click the button labelled Make it public

Cheers,
Erwin

3

Thanks, Erwin - that’s very helpful.

I presume another approach entirely would be to create a PDF from the PowerPoint file and then serve that up using a PDF viewer stack within RW?

Or I could create images of each PPT slide and use a slider stack to serve those up like a gallery, with audio? If this approach, do you or anyone else here have a suggestion for the best/simplest stack for me to use to achieve this?

Thanks again.

4

Hi @antbrad,

Images would work best. You could use a slider stack to put them in order (and that stack would add arrows for navigation automatically too).

If you’re really ambitious, you could put every slide into an image mapping stack and reintroduce some of the interactivity (if there is any in the PowerPoint of course), but that’s very labour intensive.

PDFs are notoriously difficult to implement into a website properly (it can be done of course, but usually leads to a user experience nightmare).

Cheers,
Erwin

5

Thanks, Erwin - makes sense. Any particular suggestions for a suitable sliders stack for doing this? There seem to be quite a number available and I’m not sure which one(s) would be most appropriate for this task. Thanks.

6

Hey @antbrad,

Any slider will do, really. It’s a question of taste.

Gyro by Weaver’s Space ($20) is one that’s often recommended.

Feature Slider ($15, 1LittleDesigner) is a very nice slider too.

I personally only use slider stacks that are no longer for sale unfortunately, so I can’t recommend one that I’ve used myself.

Cheers,
Erwin

7

Thanks, Erwin - after some further online research, and looking at the two you suggested also, I’ve opted for 1LittleDesigner’s Conveyor stack which is perfect for what I needed! Thanks again for all your advice.

Anthony

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