Advanced Exporter user guide

Advanced Exporter is a PowerPoint add-in that turns the open deck into other things: pictures of every slide at whatever size you need, PDFs that PowerPoint won’t make (handouts, notes pages, a range of slides), video, an HTML5 presentation, LaTeX, Markdown, and cleaned-up copies of the deck itself. It sits in a pane beside the deck. You tick the formats you want, set each one’s options, press Export, and PowerPoint asks where to save the file.

Released at v0.1.0. The hosted build, which is what manifest.xml installs, opens and exports in PowerPoint for Mac. The full run below used the development build of the same code.

Checked in PowerPoint for Mac 16.112.3 on macOS 26.4.1 (2026-10-20): every format below was exported from a real deck inside PowerPoint, and every file was checked with something other than the add-in. Pictures were opened in Pillow, TIFFs decoded by libtiff, video decoded by ffmpeg, PDFs read by poppler, and the LaTeX compiled with XeTeX (Tectonic). The Office files were read by python-pptx, python-docx and odfpy. PowerPoint itself opened the flattened deck, the trimmed PPSX (straight into the slide show), the cleaned copy, a one-slide file and the OpenDocument file with no repair prompt. Word opened the notes document. The Export button raised the native Save dialog.

Not checked: PowerPoint for Windows, PowerPoint on the web, and PowerPoint older than 16.96 on a Mac (the PDF route those would use was run in PowerPoint for Mac). The HTML5 presentation was played in a Chromium browser, but not in Safari, not opened from a file on disk, and its presenter view was only tried in one window. The pdfLaTeX output hasn’t been compiled (only XeLaTeX), and the transitions and links in the flattened deck were checked in its XML, not by playing it.

Install

The add-in installs from one small file, manifest.xml, which points PowerPoint at the add-in’s web address. Nothing is installed on your machine.

PowerPoint for Mac

1. Download manifest.xml from the install page or the latest GitHub release.
2. Copy it into ~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Powerpoint/Data/Documents/wef/ (make the wef folder if it isn’t there).
3. Quit PowerPoint completely and open it again.
4. Open a deck, then Home ▸ Add-ins ▸ Developer Add-ins ▸ Advanced Exporter. After that first time an Advanced Exporter button stays on the Home tab.

PowerPoint on the web, and Microsoft 365 on Windows

1. Home ▸ Add-ins ▸ More Add-ins, then My Add-ins ▸ Upload My Add-in.
2. Pick manifest.xml.

Using it

1. Slides. All of them, the ones selected in PowerPoint’s thumbnails, a range (1-3, 7, 9- — open ends run to the first or last slide), or one section. Hidden slides are left out unless you tick Include hidden slides; slides you select by hand always go.
2. Formats. Tick as many as you like. Each one gets a card with its options, and Back to defaults puts that card back how it started.
3. Output. The file name defaults to the deck’s. One file comes out as itself; several come out as one .zip, a folder per format.
4. Export. The pane reads the deck afresh (so edits since you opened it are included), builds everything, and hands PowerPoint the file to save. A note lists anything worth knowing: hidden slides that a format couldn’t include, animations that don’t survive as pictures, and so on. In a zip, the same notes are in export-notes.txt.

Under Presets and rendering:

• Presets save the formats you’ve ticked and all their options under a name. They live in the add-in’s storage on this machine.
• Slide pictures from is normally Automatic: PowerPoint draws each slide at the size a format asks for. PowerPoint’s PDF, rasterised draws them from PowerPoint’s PDF instead, which is what happens anyway on a PowerPoint too old to draw slides for add-ins.

Sizes

Every picture format has the same size choices: the slide’s own size (96 dpi), HD to 8K, a width, a height, both, a print resolution in dpi, or a percentage. When the size you pick isn’t the slide’s shape (a 4:3 deck into 1920 × 1080), Fit decides what happens: keep the slide’s shape, letterbox to the exact size with bars in a colour you choose, crop to fill, or stretch.

PowerPoint for Mac won’t draw a slide wider than about 4,000 pixels (4032 px for a 16:9 slide on 16.112). Bigger pictures come from PowerPoint’s own vector PDF, drawn at full resolution, so an 8K export is as sharp as a 4K one. A hidden slide isn’t in that PDF, so at those sizes it’s PowerPoint’s largest picture scaled up, and the export notes say so.

Things that don’t come along

• Animations. Every picture-based format shows a slide as it looks with all its builds finished. Video and GIF are slides with transitions between them, not a recording of the slide show.
• Sound, and video playing. Video exports show an embedded video’s poster frame. The HTML5 presentation is the exception: it plays the deck’s embedded video and audio in place.
• Hidden slides in PowerPoint’s PDF. PowerPoint leaves them out of its PDF, so the vector PDF formats can’t include them. PDF — pictures can.

Formats and their options

Images

PNG (.png)

Lossless. What PowerPoint drew, untouched when the size is the slide’s own shape.

JPEG (.jpg)

Small files for email and the web. Quality is yours to pick.

WebP (.webp)

Smaller than JPEG at the same quality, or lossless and smaller than PNG.

AVIF (.avif)

The smallest of the lot. Slow to encode — this runs in the pane, not on a GPU.

TIFF (.tif)

Lossless, with real DPI — for print shops and DTP. One file per slide, or one multi-page file.

BMP (.bmp)

24-bit Windows bitmap, uncompressed — for the kit that still insists.

TGA (.tga)

Targa, 24-bit — the still format older media servers and vision mixers load.

GIF (still) (.gif)

256 colours at most. Fine for diagrams, unkind to photos.

SVG (.svg)

The slide as a picture inside an SVG, with its links still clickable and its text still findable.

Contact sheet (.png / .jpg)

Every slide as a thumbnail on one big picture — for running orders and sign-off.

Documents

PDF — PowerPoint (vector) (.pdf)

PowerPoint’s own PDF: sharp at any zoom, text selectable. Trimmed to your slide range, or one file per slide.

PDF — pictures (.pdf)

Every slide as a picture at the resolution you choose. Hidden slides included, size under your control, looks identical everywhere.

Handouts (.pdf)

Several slides to a page — 1, 2, 3 with lines for notes, 4, 6 or 9 — as PowerPoint prints them, minus the print dialog.

Notes pages (.pdf)

One slide a page with its speaker notes underneath, running onto more pages when the notes do.

OpenDocument (pictures) (.odp)

An .odp of slide pictures with the speaker notes, for LibreOffice and anywhere that asks for ODF.

Word document (notes) (.docx)

PowerPoint’s “Create Handouts in Word”: slide pictures with the speaker notes, or with lines to write on.

Web

Web presentation (HTML5) (.html)

Plays in any browser, even straight from disk: keys, clicks and swipes, working links and video, a presenter view with your notes.

reveal.js (.html)

A reveal.js presentation: each slide’s picture as its background, links still clickable, notes in reveal’s speaker view.

Scrolling page (.html)

Every slide down one long page with its notes underneath. Reads on a phone; prints a slide a page.

Video & animation

MP4 (.mp4)

H.264, HEVC or AV1 video, timed by the deck or by you. Silent, and each slide as it rests — animations don’t play.

WebM (.webm)

VP9, VP8 or AV1 for the web. Silent, and each slide as it rests — animations don’t play.

Animated GIF (.gif)

The deck as a looping GIF for chat, email and READMEs. 256 colours at most, and no sound, naturally.

LaTeX, Markdown & data

LaTeX (Beamer) (.tex + files)

A Beamer deck that compiles: either the slides exactly as drawn, or rebuilt as editable LaTeX. Or an article with the notes.

Markdown (.md + images)

Plain Markdown for notes and wikis, Marp or Pandoc/Quarto slides — the words rebuilt, the slide pictures alongside, or both.

Outline (.txt / .rtf / .opml)

The deck’s words as an outline: tab-indented text, RTF that PowerPoint reads straight back in, or OPML for outliners.

Speaker notes (.txt / .md)

Just the notes, slide by slide — a script to rehearse from, or hand to the autocue.

CSV (.csv)

One row per slide — number, title, section, hidden, timings, word count, notes — for a running order or a spreadsheet.

JSON (.json)

Everything the exporter read from the deck — text with formatting, notes, links, geometry, transitions — for scripts.

PowerPoint & Office

PowerPoint file (.pptx / .ppsx / .potx)

The deck itself, as a .pptx, a show that opens straight into presenting, or a template — trimmed to the slides you picked.

One file per slide (.pptx)

Each slide as a .pptx of its own, masters, notes and media included. PowerPoint does the cutting.

Flattened deck (pictures) (.pptx)

Every slide as one picture in a fresh deck, notes, transitions and links kept — it plays the same on a machine without your fonts.

The HTML5 presentation

The Web presentation (HTML5) export is a folder (or one self-contained .html file) that plays the deck in any browser, offline.

#/7 at the end of the address opens slide 7. Links on the slides are clickable where the picture can say where they are, and every link is in the page’s text for screen readers and Find. Speaker notes are left out of the files unless you turn Speaker notes on, since a web presentation tends to get sent on.