Pack and Go

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Pack and Go

In this lesson, you will learn about a feature that allows you to transport your PowerPoint presentation easily to other computers and to even run the presentation on a computer that does not have PowerPoint installed. For your assignment, you will save a PowerPoint presentation (perhaps the one you used for your PowerPoint I assignment) in Pack and Go format. This file will be submitted in a compressed file at the end of this module.

Packing Up a Presentation

When you want to run a slide show on another computer, you can use the Pack and Go Wizard. The wizard packages together, on a disk, all the files and fonts used in the presentation. When you intend to run your show on a computer that doesn't have PowerPoint installed, it also packages the PowerPoint Viewer on the disk. To run the Pack and Go wizard, go to the File menu and select "Pack and Go"

The wizard should look something like the following:

The steps, which you will go through in the wizard, are described briefly below. For more information about any step, click the button with the question mark () in the wizard window.

Pick Files to Pack

Choose active presentation to pack the one you currently have open. Otherwise, select "other presentation" and use the browse button to locate the file.

Choose Destination

Select the drive you wish to store the packed files. "A" drives are floppy drives. If your chosen drive is not listed, select "choose destination" and use the browse button to find your drive (and folder, if you'd like).

Links

The following step will ask you if you want to include linked files with your presentation. Say yes, if you've linked to any files, so they will be available on the destination computer.
The other option to embed TrueType fonts will maintain the way your current font is displayed (even if the same font is not available on the destination computer) by embedding it.

Viewer

Including the viewer will allow you to show your presentation even if the destination computer does not have PowerPoint installed.

After your presentation has been packed, you will see the file named "pngsetup.exe" - Now, normally you are warned to never open .exe (executable program files) unless you know what it is, who wrote the program, etc., because these can sometimes be virus programs. This file, however, is safe because we know the background of it and we just created it ourselves. You can bring this disk to another computer (via a floppy, etc.) and unpack your presentation by double-clicking on this pngsetup.exe file.

Unpacking a Presentation

When you unpack a presentation by double-clicking on the .exe file, you may see a window similar to the following:

It asks you to choose the destination drive/folder where you want the PowerPoint presentation extracted to. You may get a warning window, similar to the following, warning you that any files of the same name will be overwritten.

Lastly, you will be alerted that the extraction was successful and given the option to view it immediately by clicking "Yes." If you choose "No," you will still be able to open the file later in PowerPoint.

That concludes this lesson. You will be asked to submit your Pack and Go file at the end of this module, by including it in a compression file (.zip or .sit).

Please continue to the next lesson on Presentations and the WWW.