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stephreed-peck

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 13, 2010
2
0
For years in my department we have been supplied with PowerPoint line drawings to put into our Indesign Executive Summarys etc and have had to redraw them as the quality is poor when copied across.

Does anyone know if there is a plugin of some form that can actually convert these line drawings into vector for us so that we don't have to redraw them?

I did find a thread that suggested doing 'print to file' from PowerPoint and saving the slides as Post Script files. I have only managed to get this to 'kind of' work with a couple of slides, the coloured boxes come across fine but the text comes across rotated at a 90 degree angel. Still proving time consuming as the text lines come across as separate text boxes too.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.:confused:
 
For years in my department we have been supplied with PowerPoint line drawings to put into our Indesign Executive Summarys etc and have had to redraw them as the quality is poor when copied across.

Does anyone know if there is a plugin of some form that can actually convert these line drawings into vector for us so that we don't have to redraw them? ...

:confused:
Wow! Talk about the wrong tool for the job! PowerPoint is a tool for producing crappy presentations, not vector graphics. That said, graphics created in PowerPoint are vector graphics. Certainly, line drawings are vector graphics.

My quick & dirty suggestion: If the graphics are in a PowerPoint file, then print the file to PDF. Place the PDF in the Indesign layout.

My more careful and considered suggestion: If you have the time, then use a dedicated vector graphics editor to recreate a graphics that look like those in the PowerPoint files.
 
Wow! Talk about the wrong tool for the job! PowerPoint is a tool for producing crappy presentations, not vector graphics. That said, graphics created in PowerPoint are vector graphics. Certainly, line drawings are vector graphics.

My quick & dirty suggestion: If the graphics are in a PowerPoint file, then print the file to PDF. Place the PDF in the Indesign layout.

My more careful and considered suggestion: If you have the time, then use a dedicated vector graphics editor to recreate a graphics that look like those in the PowerPoint files.

Thanks for the fast response.

We quite often have to amend the text in the 'crappy' PowerPoint drawings (you are correct, it isn't the best application for them to supply us the drawings in, but it is the only package that the company supplies them with.)

Copy & Paste provides us with a non-editable image file, and producing a PDF also doesn't help with the editing issue.

We have been re-creating the images in Adobe Illustrator for years, I was just wondering if some clever person had created a plugin for such a conversion. I have found a way to 'Export as EPS' from apps such as Open Office, but the text comes across as converted to outlines which also doesn't help when we are asked to edit some text.
 
Another option, which isn't giving you exactly what you want either, is to export your PowerPoint deck as JPGs. In PowerPoint 2008, go to File -> Send to -> iPhoto. In iPhoto, you'll get a new album with JPGs of each of your slides in it. (The intent behind this feature is that you can now sync this album with your iPod or iPhone, and so you've got a highly-portable version of your deck always available to you.)

I'm not sure if this will be any better than what you've tried so far, but it can't hurt to give it a go.

Regards,
Nadyne.
 
Convert PowerPoint to vector format

Years later (i.e., today), I myself had to do this. Looked online for help, and here's what I found:

From Windows PowerPoint, save the file to Enhanced Windows Metafile format. (PowerPoint for Mac doesn't have that format option, so you'll need to save it from Windows. I couldn't find a Mac PowerPoint format option that works.) Illustrator (Mac) can then open the file.

It ain't pretty, though: E.g., dashed lines are often broken up into separate dashes. Text blocks get separated line by line. Special characters (e.g., quotes) get exiled into separate text blocks. Italic text doesn't have good tracking, so you may have to retype. But the text is editable and those issues can be overcome.

Bottom line: it's tedious, but it works. Depending on the complexity of the original file, you might be better off simply redoing it in Illustrator.
 
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