HTML "Round-tripping" to repair corruption
PowerPoint 2000 and later have the ability to "round trip" -- that is, to save to HTML then reopen the HTML as a new PowerPoint presentation.
This has an interesting and very useful side effect: it can clean out junk and repair corruption in the PPT file that you can't get rid of any other way.
How to HTML Round-Trip manually
Simply doing an HTML save from PowerPoint may not get the job done. There are a few settings you need to make first.
Luckily, PowerPoint MVP Glen Millar has written this thorough tutorial.
If you use PowerPoint 2007, you save as HTML a bit differently than Glen describes:
- Choose Office Button | Save As
- In the Save As dialog box that appears, choose Save as type: and pick Web Page (*.htm;*.html)
- To set the other options that Glen mentions, click Tools then click Web Options... on the drop-down menu that appears.
If you use PowerPoint 2010, you can't save as HTML any longer, but there's an easier way to round-trip that works even with PowerPoint 2010. Read on ...
High Power HTML Round-Tripping
Use the free PPTools StarterSet add-in. Install it, open your presentation, then hold down the Control key while you click the Help (?) button on the Starter Set toolbar. Starter Set automatically "roundtrips" your presentation for you and opens the round-tripped version. Couldn't be simpler.
Several other PPTools add-ins (including the free demo versions) have the same Ctrl+Click Help to Round-Trip feature, including FixLinks, Image Exporter, PPT2HTML, Prep4PDF and Protect.
Handy side effect
When you use the PPTools add-ins to round-trip, they leave the exported HTML on your hard drive, in case you'd like to use it. For example, if you have PowerPoint 2010, you can no longer save as a web page directly from PowerPoint, but by using the PPTools add-ins, you can.
The PPTools round-trip feature saves to your TEMP folder where it creates:
- A file called XXXX_repaired.htm (where XXXX represents the name of your original presentation)
- A folder called XXXX_repaired_files containing all the needed support files for the main presentation file
You can move the HTM file and supporting files folder to any other convenient location (on your hard drive, on a web server, etc). The two must remain together in order for the HTML to work properly.
See Where's my TEMP folder? if you need help finding your TEMP folder.
Note: One reason that you can no longer save as Web page from PowerPoint 2010 is that HTML doesn't support all of the features that 2010 is capable of. The PPTools add-ins simply automate PowerPoint's own save as Web page feature (which is still there, though hidden, in PPT 2010) but the results may not be perfect.