How do I make PP slides from a complex Word document with TOC?

[Mz Berry]

My Word documents (50 to 70 pages) have several levels of headings (that make
up the Table of Contents); I need to create PP presentations from which I can
(orally)discuss the relevant details (omitting the rest).
If I copy the document (entirely or piece-by-piece) I have an enormous
amount of work to split into slides and format into appropriate outlines, and
delete the extraneous text. When I change the document view to 'Outline' to
import into PP, I still have enormous work to repair and reformat each slide.

Is there an easier way to do this?
thanks,
Berry

 

[Lucy Thomson]

Hi Berry

You can 'Insert -> slides from outline'. What this will do is create a new
slide every time it comes across text in heading 1 style, that text will
become the title of the slide, heading 2 style text will become level 1
bullet points, heading 3 style text will become level 2 bullet points etc.
This should at least get you started.

Personally, I would select the relevant points (as you already have) and
create visual aids that really support those points - a beautiful simple
chart, a single word on a slide, a full slide photograph with just a word or
two, that sort of thing. For inspiration spend 10 minutes having a look
around www.presentationzen.com - I would particularly recommend this article
as a starting point:
http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/whats_good_powe.html.
Sorry, but I feel obliged to spread the word about powerpointing well
whenever the opportunity arises

Lucy

 

[Mz Berry]

Hi Lucy,
Thank you for responding. Because the heading styles are varied, based on
the original document source, this does not happen. Each heading becomes one
slide title, and retains the original heading numbers (3, 3.1, 3.1.1, etc),
even if I delete or re-arrange slides. Basically this requires as much work
as typing a new PP outline, with the work to remove the numbers and assign
proper outline levels.
Perhaps I am asking for something that does not work, from these documents.
Thanks,
Berry

 

[Lucy Thomson]

Hi

What might work is to create a copy of the document then select all text
with formatting first level numbering and change it to Heading 1, all text
with formatting 2nd level numbering change to Heading 2 etc. That should
save you some time (in Word you can select text with the style you want to
change and then select all instances of that style - how you do that depends
on your version of Word).

Lucy