With PowerPoint, you can create dynamic and energetic presentations complete with digital photos and animated transitions. If you are looking to build a professional website, Microsoft PowerPoint probably isn't the best tool for the job. You can, however, use this leading presentation software to publish your PowerPoint presentations to the web, either as a single page or embedded as a slideshow.
Publishing to the Web
Once you've created your presentation in PowerPoint, you can easily publish it to the Web as HTML. Open the presentation that you want to publish and choose "Save As" from the "File" menu. In the "Save As" box, you can select "Web Page" or "Single File Web Page." You will need to have a web hosting account and enter in the web server information into the "Save In" path if you want to publish the files online and have others be able to view them. Once you've filled in the "Save As" dialog box, you can choose which slides you want to upload after clicking the "Publish" button.
Single File Web Page
When you save your PowerPoint presentation as a single file Web page, it embeds all of the elements that you used to create it. This might include things like graphics for bullets, digital photos and files used to create a unifying theme for your presentation or slide. Publishing in this format will create a rather large file size, depending on how many elements you used. You can rename this file to "Index.html" and upload it to your web server to use it as a home page.
Publishing as a Web Page
If you prefer, you can choose to save your presentation as a web page. Instead of embedding the graphics and style sheets into the file, this will save your presentation as a web page and create a folder that contains all of the supporting files for elements like the background, font, colors and graphics. When you select "Publish," you will be asked which slides you want to publish.
System Requirements
These system requirements are for the most recent version of PowerPoint as of 2010, included in the Office 2010 productivity suite.
500 MHz or faster processor
256 MB RAM of memory. 512 MB is recommended for some graphics features and other advanced functionality
1.5 GB available hard disk space
1024x576 or higher resolution monitor or other display
Windows XP with Service Pack (SP) 3 (32-bit operating system (OS) only) or Windows Vista with SP1, Windows 7
DirectX 9.0c graphics card with 64 MB or more video memory.
Additional Requirements: The Multi-Touch features require Windows 7 and a touch enabled device.
History
Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation software developed as part of the Office productivity suite. Its main purpose is to help users create visual presentations consisting of slides. It was originally created for Apple's Mac computer but was purchase by Microsoft in 1987. Now it is available for both PC and Mac. The program has increased in functionality over the years with more recent versions adding multimedia features like video and animation.