Flash PowerPoint Blog
I got this question from one of our readers:
Thank you for a very good tutorial on how to insert Flash into a PowerPoint presentation. I followed your instructions and it worked great on my computer. Now I have to send this presentation to different clients for a review and the problem starts ... some can't see the animation (even though they downloaded Flash Player through IE etc...) I am sending them my PowerPoint presentation file along with SWF files that are inserted in one folder. I instruct to open the presentation through PowerPoint applications but they still cant see what I made. I could not find anywhere on your site that explains how to properly publish your presentation and share with other people. If I cant distribute what I did then all the work was very much useless, all the presentations are given to other people and different conference and they all have different PCs. I would love to know if you can help or guide me in the right direction.
Well, the answer is to not embed the Flash file at all as per instructions on this page. Make sure you don't embed the file in the PowerPoint presentation -- then place both the SWF file and the external text file in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation and insert the Flash control thereafter.
See Also: Cannot Embed Flash Movies in PowerPoint 2007
Labels: embed, flash, insert, powerpoint
Here's one of the typical questions I have been asked about no longer being able to embed Flash movies in PowerPoint 2007:
I've been working with inserting Flash movies in PowerPoint without any problems in PowerPoint 2003, but since upgrading to 2007 I've not been able to embed a single Flash movie! PowerPoint 2007 poses no problems in getting the Shockwave Flash object into the PowerPoint slide, and it even allows me to set the embed option to True, but the fact is that the Flash file does not embed at all -- it does not travel with the PowerPoint presentation. This makes sharing impossible -- have you run into this issue, or know any workarounds?
There's no official word on this yet as to what is causing the issue, but it is clear that PowerPoint 2007 is preventing the embedding of a Flash movie -- maybe this is due to enhanced security controls in this version -- or it could be due to some other reason.
You can still continue using PowerPoint 2003 to create presentations with embedded Flash movies. If you must use PowerPoint 2007, you could make sure that the Flash movie and the PowerPoint presentation are in the same folder -- and then copy the entire folder if you need to move the presentation to another computer.
Labels: 2007, embed, flash, powerpoint
Rhys Jeremiah has been working in IT after graduating from Bristol University with a degree in mathematics. He started writing database applications for a large insurance company and quickly moved into web development, the largest site for a major international motor manufacturer. Although now teaching mathematics, he still manages some IT work. He currently lives in Cardiff, Wales with Sarah, his wife, and their children Lloyd and Carys.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your Extract Flash product, and what inspired you to create this.
Rhys: As is often common, the reason for creating the Extract Flash product was to solve a problem that could have easily been avoided. The company I was working for at the time was a major client of a marketing firm here in the UK. Last thing on a Friday afternoon, we were asked to update a flash file on a website and that the replacement file would be winging its way to us via email very soon. None of us in the office were quite prepared for the fact that the file had been placed into a PowerPoint presentation. It seemed that the last thing the marketing company did before the weekend was to send that file as numerous phone calls to get the original file failed. So we had a problem.
I noticed that it was possible to drag and drop the embedded Flash object between Office products and even drop it onto the desktop as a scrap file (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138275). So I reasoned that the file must contain the Flash file that we were searching for. Hence it was worth digging a bit deeper. On opening the scrap file in a binary editor, I was able to locate the header block of the SWF file and without too much effort it was the possible to pull the binary data out and write it back to disk. The reason I wrote an application to do this is that I enjoy the challenge of trying something new, and also providing a useful tool to the community. In theory the scrap approach would work for any type of embedded object so long as the header block could be read and processed. With a small amount of knowledge it would be possible to change the file to search a binary file for any header block and extract the embedded data. From memory I think that SWF files are held in PowerPoint files without encryption so you don't necessarily need to mess about with the scrap file.
Geetesh: Many people believe that their embedded Flash content in a PowerPoint slide is secure -- so this does prove them wrong. How important is it for them to be aware of this, and would the scrap approach also work with any other embedded content in Microsoft Office documents.
Rhys: From my experience many people think that all embedded files in Office documents are secure. I can't count how many times someone has sent me a Word document containing loads of images. I've never really considered the people actually use this method to protect their files. It's certainly naive to approach security in this fashion. Personally I think that the only way to secure your sensitive data is not to give it away, as soon as you release any information you lose the ability to control the distribution. If you really want to secure your embedded content don't embed it.
Labels: embed, extract, flash, powerpoint
Here's a fictitious question: I have embedded a Flash movie in a PowerPoint presentation, and I would not like anyone to be able to save that embedded Flash movie from my PowerPoint presentation and use it elsewhere. And it does not seem doable -- so are my Flash files really safe?
OK -- yes they are reasonably safe only because many people are just not aware of that possibility, but remember that technology moves faster each day. There are indeed third party products that allow you to extract Flash content from PowerPoint files quite easily, and although these are not too well known or documented, they do exist.
So don't assume those Flash movies cannot be extracted.
If you need a Flash movie that's within a PowerPoint file, you can always request the creator of the presentation for a copy of the Flash movie. And just in case you created the presentation and lost the Flash movie, you can use the third party tools!
Labels: embed, extract, flash, powerpoint
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