It would be exciting if you could convert a PowerPoint presentation to flash in a completely free way. With a lot of net searching and tutorial reading, I was able to do it with some Open Source Tools. You can read this step-by-step tutorial to learn the details.

Step 1
I launch Open Office in headless mode with a Mac. Then I open an Xterm and do the following

$ cd /Applications/OpenOffice.org 2.0.app/Contents/MacOS/program/
$ ./soffice -headless -accept=”socket,port=8100;urp;”

Step 2
Download JOOConverter from
http://jooreports.sourceforge.net/?q=jooconverter
JOOConverter is an Open Source Java/OpenOffice Document converter to perform conversions between different office document formats.

I use a Java Library JOOConverter to convert my PowerPoint to flash by running

$ java -jar jooconverter.jar powerpoint.ppt flash.swf

The converted flash does not look pretty good with some strange artifacts in it. But it does play with a flash player although no other SWF tool is able to handle or even to read this flash file by Open Office. So I decided to find a tool to tidy up the flash file.

Step 3
Download Transform SWF from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/transform-swf
The Transform SWF framework is the tool to parse and encode Flash (.swf) files.

I finally managed to find Transform SWF to rewrite the flash file. I Load it into Transform’s internal swf model and then write it out again. With some nasty hacking of the Transform source, I was able to swallow exceptions caused by the out-of-bounds pointers in the swf file generated by swallow exceptions. And once again, it worked.

I think it would be troublesome to convert a PowerPoint to flash in this way if you do not have some programming experience. For the practical things, you may try some commercial converters in the market like Wondershare PPT2Flash Standard and PPT2Flash Professional

Wondershare PPT2Flash Standard at
http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-flash.php?sid=5
How to use it from
http://www.ppt-to-dvd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1514
Free Trial from
http://www.sameshow.com/download/ppt2flash-download.php?sid=5

Wondershare PPT2Flash Professional at
http://www.sameshow.com/powerpoint-to-flash-pro.php?sid=5
How to use it from
http://www.ppt-to-dvd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1515
Downlaod it from
http://www.sameshow.com/download/powerpoint-to-flash-download.php?sid=5