Exporting PowerPoint and Other Graphics to the Web

Last Modified: 1/29/08

Credit: Kirk Born (St Sci/NASA)

Many current text and graphics programs, such as PowerPoint, MS Word, and Excel, can now export their contents to the web very easily. Often it is as easy as simply clicking on File > Save As HTML in the opening menu.

Click on the following link to see a self explanatory PowerPoint 2000 demonstration which shows how to include text, graphics, animation, sound files, and your own narration, as well as how to export it to the Web

Excel charts and graphics can easily be exported to the web. The basic steps for creating a chart are:

Invoke Excel and key in or import the data values

Highlight them and click a chart wizard

Follow the instructions therein in terms of the chart type, labels, legend, axes, etc, and, when you finish, select "Place Chart (*) as new chart".

Click on Save as Web Page ... , select a file name (to make it explicit, we will call it excel1), select the "type" as Web Page(*.htm,*.html), and then click on Save. This creates two things: a single file named excel1.htm and a directory named excel1

You can delete the file excel1.htm, and delete all but the GIF files in the directory excel1. The GIF files are named image001.gif, image002.gif, ...

Then select which GIF files you want and use WS-FTP or other means to move them to your web server directory. Here is an example of several Excel charts produced this way.

Another product that can generate interactive HTML is Macromedia Shockwave. The authoring tool is enormously expensive but the Shockwave viewer MacroMedia Flash player is free. Some interesting demos are here.

Course Topics

Graphics Design Based on Edward Tufte's Principles

Using Graphics Equipment in the Vislab

Clickable Image Maps

Scrollable Frames

Clickable Image Maps with Frames

Making Animated GIFs

Exporting PowerPoint and Other Graphics to the Web

3D Animation Using VRML

Incorporating Streaming Media in Your Browser

Using and Adapting Java Applets