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How to extract or export PowerPoint/Presentation images and other media (the easiest and fastest method).



I just learned a trick that is hands down the easiest, fastest, and best way to export images from a PowerPoint or presentation file.

First off, to give credit where credit is due, I discovered how to do this from andva's comment on this Lifehacker post.

The method is simply to extract the file. 

While there are a handful of other different ways to extract files from a PowerPoint, they all have significant drawbacks. Here are some of the common methods you might try, with their limitations.

  • Copy and Paste. You can always copy the image from your presentation and paste it in an image editor. The limitations with this are that you must have an image editor handy, know how to use it, and be willing to spend the time to do this one by one.
  • PowerPoint gives you the option to export the slides as images. LibreOffice also allows you to do this (one slide at a time). The drawback here is that you are not getting the original image, rather a scaled down version of what you want.
  • You can also export the presentation as an HTML file. This will put all the images together in a folder for you and is really quick and easy; the drawback here is again, you are getting scaled down images.
  • Finally, you can find software dedicated to extracting the images. Obviously, the drawback here is that you have to download software for doing a simple task that you can already do.

Extracting the file is simply the best method. I will show in detail a couple ways for how to do that below:


It is important to note that not all PowerPoint files can be extracted. PowerPoint 97-2003 (.ppt) files do not work. If this is the file extension that you have, you will need to first open it in PowerPoint, Google Drive, or LibreOffice Impress and save the file format as either .pptx or .odf. I have verified that PowerPoint 2007-2013 (.pptx), .pptm, and ODF Presentation (.odf) files can all be extracted.

(Note that while the below methods in theory work on any operating system, I did this specifically using Windows 10 and 7-Zip.)

One way to extract the file is simply by changing the file extension to .zip (interestingly, Microsoft actually has detailed instructions for how to do this). Alternatively, if you have a decent zipping/unzipping or archiving software (I recommend 7-zip) you can just right click the file and extract it to its own folder.


Once the folder is extracted, you will want to open the extracted folder and look for a sub-folder where your images are located. The name will be different depending on the original file extension (e.g. .pptx or .odf) but you will be looking for a folder with the name ppt, or media, or Pictures.


You may have to click through a couple levels of folders to find the right one. The folder names are generally pretty self explanatory.

Lastly, once you find the correct folder, you will find all the images. They are the original size and will not be scaled down. Yay!


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