Read on to learn more.

Exporting the presentation
To use the PowerPoint 97 Internet Wizard (or the Save as HTML feature as it is sometimes called), open up the presentation in PowerPoint 97 and simply select Save As HTML from the File menu. If this option is grayed out, you probably didn't install the Internet Wizard when PowerPoint was installed. You can re-run the Office 97 or PowerPoint 97 setup wizard, which will enable you to add components like the Internet Wizard.

You will then be presented with dialog boxes that allow you to choose exactly how you want your PowerPoint 97 presentation to be saved. There are really only two important options, choosing the size of the images that are created and making sure you note what directory the resulting files are saved in. The other options don't matter because they are not necessary to help you import the information into Notes.

As far as image size, I usually choose to save the slides as GIF files that are three-quarters of the smallest screen size (640 x 480). I've found this size to be the smallest it can be without losing too much of the clarity of the smaller fonts and picture details. I also know that slide images this size will fit on everyone's screen whether they are viewing it online or in a Notes client. Mmake sure you remember what directory your presentation is saved in so that you can automatically re-create the presentation in Notes. Once you have indicated the directory, click Finish to save the presentation as HTML.

You may be asking yourself how you can get to these images. Well, when you look at what the PowerPoint Internet Wizard produces, you see that all of the slide images are converted into separate, stand-alone GIF files that are named logically and sequentially (i.e. img001.gif and img002.gif). You're probably already drooling, since wise developer that you are, you've realized that you can easily attach these GIFs to documents using a LotusScript agent and then display them through a Web view by computing the correct URL for the image source.

But wait, there's more! The PowerPoint Internet Wizard also produces very well structured HTML files that contain the title and notes of each of the slides. And these files are named in the same logical way as the GIF files. Simply attach these files using LotusScript just like we did with the GIF files.

You can create a presentation and attach the appropriate files as outlined above by using the CreatePresentationAgent that I've created. This is shown in the listing located at http://www.component-net.com/dp-extras/powerpoint-1.html.

It will ask you for the name of the presentation, the directory the files generated by PowerPoint are stored in and how many slides are in the presentation. It should then loop through and create a document for each of the slides and attach the necessary files (Note: You must be in a view and have a document selected in order to run this agent).

Extracting the information
Once I knew I could extract all of this information automatically, the key to developing a better method of posting presentations was to create a form for capturing and holding all of this information. The result was the Presentation Form that I created. My goal when creating this form was to not only capture all of the information, but also to be able to display it so it looked good in Notes and had navigation buttons so a user could quickly flip through the slides.