How to convert PPt to text under linux platform?

czyhsoul · 08-14-2007, 03:41 AM

I have trouble this problem for days.
I need a tool to extact text from ppt ,especially UTF-8 support.
if someone has some ideas,please contact me

pwc101 · 08-14-2007, 03:45 AM

Does ppt refer to Microsoft PowerPoint files? If so, have you tried opening it with OpenOffice Impress? That's always handled the conversion very well for me.

Also, this is a forum, the answers get posted here and emailed to you; this way everyone can benefit. If I were you, I'd also remove your email address from your question otherwise you're likely to get a lot more spam emails.

czyhsoul · 08-14-2007, 03:57 AM

Thank you for your mind.
just as you said,PPT= PowerPoint files,I need a tools to convert it to text via command line
Does Open Office support the way of command line?

pwc101 · 08-14-2007, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by czyhsoul

Does Open Office support the way of command line?

I don't think so, no.

I've had a look on Google for some tools, but I can't find anything that will extract the text from a PowerPoint file.

czyhsoul · 08-14-2007, 04:08 AM

Thank you very much, Does anyone have some idwa?

pixellany · 08-14-2007, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by czyhsoul

Thank you very much, Does anyone have some idwa?

I think it would help to know why you need to do this--i.e. what is the overall problem you are trying to solve? If you study the format of a .ppt file, I'm sure you could write a program to extract the text, but something like OpenOffice already does that.

Have you tried reading a .ppt file using more or cat|hexdump?

theYinYeti · 08-14-2007, 06:50 AM

Depending on what you intend to do with the text, the "strings" command might suit you.

Yves.

pixellany · 08-14-2007, 07:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theYinYeti

Depending on what you intend to do with the text, the "strings" command might suit you.

Yves.

Cool command!!--learn something new every day. Ran it on a .ppt file and indeed saw some meaningful text

(plus a whole lot of useless stuff......)

This will be good if one knows what they are looking for.

BB_DaKraxor · 06-18-2009, 05:56 AM

I know it's a dead topic, but I think this worths mentioning. OpenOffice.org does have a command line interface. There also is a python script called unoconv that makes conversion easy, and it's available as a package for several distros, including Ubuntu and Arch (in AUR).