PPTX to .Mov

ByMike Moffit

An interesting question was posed this week in our support email box at support@smalldog.com. The customer had, with previous versions of Office, been able to export PowerPoint presentations with sound track. Since moving to Office 2011, the Save as Movie option now stripped the audio from the .mov file.

So, what to do? After doing some research, I think I found a solution to their problem as explained below.

So as to not alter/damage the PowerPoint file in question, I suggest first making a copy of the file. The second step is to append the file extension on the copy to .zip. Double clicking on the new file opens it with the Archive Utility, which would show the audio package as a distinct file. Then, you can copy the audio file to the desktop from the new folder.

Once the audio is a separate file, we can use the functionality of the application that Microsoft had already built in. Under File in the menu bar, there is an option to Save as Movie. In the box that pops up, we can choose a Background soundtrack for the movie file we are creating. With that drop down we would select the extracted audio file that we saved from the Zip.

Many may suggest using Keynote instead. While this is definitely an option, I have found that Keynote also has issues with audio when exported to .mov. Your opinions are always welcome, and of course your milage may vary. Do you have a better solution? We would be happy to hear it and share with the other Tech Tails readers! (Click on the email above to let me know!)

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