PowerPoint using PPT Viewer

By default, PowerPoint Viewer is installed when you install PowerPoint, so that you can use the Viewer with the Package a Presentation for CD feature. Otherwise you can download the Viewer from the Microsoft Website. Just search in the Online help of PowerPoint how to download the Viewer.

There are 3 steps to protect the PowerPoint presentation.

Create a Presentation for CD

The following description refers to PowerPoint 2007 but the required steps should be similar for other PowerPoint versions.

•	On the Microsoft Office Button, point to the arrow next to Publish, and then click Package for CD

•	In the Package for CD dialog box, in the Name the CD box, type a name for the CD presentation

•	Click Options. Under Package type, you must select: Viewer Package (update file formats to run in PowerPoint Viewer), and then select an option in how presentations will play in the viewer list

•	To ensure that files that are linked to your presentation are included in the package, select the Linked files check box

•	Specify a password for modify/edit (password to open the file should be empty ). This adds just additional security

•	Click OK to close the Options dialog box

•	Click Copy to Folder, enter a folder name and location, and then click OK.

Create a new folder where you only store the files for this project

Import the files

Now import all the files from the project folder you created and mark pptview.exe as startfile using the button Define as starting file. A red icon signals the start file.

The import screen would show the following files if you are using PowerPoint 2007.

The project can contain multiple PPT files as long as they are linked - e.g. PPT file1 has a link to PPT file 2

If you have multiple PPT files, which are not linked, we recommend making a menu in PowerPoint (just a presentation with one slide) and link to each presentation. You can then pack all presentations in one database. If the size of all presentations exceed 100 MB, you have to split the project into several databases (one project for each PPT file) and use a different menu. Otherwise, the time to load the presentation would take too long.

The PowerPoint Viewer is started using the command line /S /L "playlist.txt". You could specify a different command line in the field Command line parameter for EXE file.