Hi, I would be grateful for any advice on how to export or convert an existing Articulate Storyline 360 project into a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation? We use Articulate often but on an upcoming occasion we need to be able to quickly export/convert our .story presentations to PPT; any solutions? Thank you so much! Respectfully, Andrew Farmer

Keep in mind that Storyline and PowerPoint are two different applications with different programming and file names. They may look similar, but they don't work the same way or have the same features. When Storyline imports PowerPoint, it's looking inside the PowerPoint file, seeing what's there and rebuilding the content in Storyline. It's creating Storyline slides based on what PowerPoint says is in the PowerPoint slides. Not much different than you opening a blank slide and then building a Storyline slide based on what you see in PowerPoint. That's my non-technical explanation. :) In reverse, PowerPoint doesn't have a feature to open a Storyline file and rebuild the Storyline content as PowerPoint slides. And Storyline is not going to output to PowerPoint because of the interactive features such as layers, variables, the various triggers, drag and drops, etc. PowerPoint wouldn't know what to do with those things. With that said, I looked over the questions in the thread and here are some workarounds/ideas for those who want their Storyline content in PowerPoint. Most of these do not take much time and are fairly simple to do. Start your course design with PowerPoint. If you are always running PowerPoint content and Storyline content in tandem. I'd build all of your core content in PowerPoint. When it's complete, you import to Storyline and then add your interactive elements. If you need to make modifications to a few slides, modify the PowerPoint, import into Storyline, and delete the old one. That works if you're not changing a lot of content. So PowerPoint is always the core content that is signed off on before you start working in Storyline. Use the screen capture method I described above. That works well and doesn't take long. Blog post and tutorial. Publish Storyline to Word to have a Presentation File This is super easy and only takes a few minutes. The output is a PowerPoint file with all of your Storyline content and you can make it interactive (as much as PPT can handle) Publish as Word. This publishes to an older version so people can open it. Open the Word, save as .docx to convert it. Unzip the Word docx to expose the images. Import the images into PowerPoint and you're done. Tutorial with tips on editing and adding interactions Publish to Word to make edits. This works when you have a reviewer who doesn't have Storyline but needs to edit the text in the slides. Follow the publish to Word instructions above. Work from either the Word doc or do the PPT import to see the images better. Export a translation version. Make text edits in the translation. Reimport into Storyline. All of your edits are in Storyline. Tutorial to show how that works. Only One Storyline author Have the people build whatever they want in PowerPoint and then you import those slides into Storyline, apply your theme settings/layouts. If that's something you do quite a bit, I'd create a master slide that has the layouts and whatnot to map to what you do in Storyline.

Here's the thing - I need to create downloadable job aids to go with our elearning. I don't need animations or triggers for handouts. If I was able to export to PPT, I'd have at least a similar looking framework from which to create complimentary materials. Without the option to export to PPT I'm left with creating it from grainy screenshots, or converting to Word and then converting to PPT which again, leaves the visual quality lacking. I know our c-suite is looking for all our materials to have the same high quality, and I'd like to give it to them without having to recreate the wheel from scratch for every single project. I'm reading posts about this from 4+ years ago, and it makes me fret this isn't going to be a priority for some time to come. I just want to put in my 2 cents - I'm jammed for time and recreating already edited and lovely content is a bummer.

I have been searching for a solution to this as well, and today I tried this with some success. Publish from Storyline 360 to Word with Large screenshot size and ticked show layers and show slide notes. (I have my text/audio saved as notes to act as the transcript for accessibility feature) Once open in Word, I saved the file as a PDF. In Acrobat DC Pro, I opened the PDF and then exported the PDF as a PowerPoint file. This brings in each slide with a screenshot of the slide as well as the notes. It is a bit fiddly, but I find this much quicker than taking screenshots of each slide then adding in all my text. I hope this helps.

Ok, that's not the best option. Is this something that Articulate is working on?

Just to add to the conversation, I think it is clear that a export to PPT is a feature that users need and want and I don't understand Articulates push back. I understand triggers, interactivity etc can't be used in PPT. However 99% of elearning projects developed (that need exporting to PPT) are simple text and images with the occasional layer. Why is it so difficult to export the content only to pptx? People do not expect the PPT to act like storyline. Just like exporting to video I would not expect interactivity. Saying this, I must say the export to video is a great feature. The workarounds from staff are not viable solutions for large corporate organisations, time to stop asking why and ask yourself how. I don't believe this one is too hard for your developers and would add real value to the product.

How to Export Storyline 360 project to PowerPoint?

TomKuhlmann
Staff
7 years ago
Assuming there's no interactive component like clicking buttons, drag/drop, etcs, here's an idea:

Go through the course with a screencapture tool to create a video of the course.

Capture at a really low frame rate (lower frame rate gives you fewer images)

Output the video frames as images

Pull out the images you need

Insert the images into PPT slides

That will let you capture all of the Storyline screens and use them in PPT.

I am writing a post on this for the blog, was playing around with this idea a few days ago.
- LaurieKinzie-c1
  Community Member
  3 years ago
  Hi, @Tom Kuhlmann. I am able to export in to PP. However, is there a way now that the PP can be editable? (Text)
  - TomKuhlmann
    Staff
    3 years ago
    If you want to have an editable PowerPoint, you should start the project with PowerPoint.
    
    The workaround I offered is mostly so you have a PowerPoint version of what you built in Storyline. I suppose if you have minor editing, you could rebuild the slide and/or hide the text of the old slide with a shape and then add new text over it.
    
    There are some OCR text reading apps that can extract text from existing images and you could copy and paste into PowerPoint.
TomKuhlmann
Staff
7 years ago
FYI, I moved the post up to this week. And here's a tutorial on how I use Screen2Gif to do this. Sorry for the rambling in the video, I just did it on the fly. :)

Post

Tutorial
AndrewFarmer1
Community Member
7 years ago
Mr. Kuhlmann,

I really appreciate your response!

Your feedback has helped significantly, thank you so much!

Respectfully,

Andrew Farmer
TomKuhlmann
Staff
7 years ago
Glad that it helped.
HumbertoHuerta
Community Member
7 years ago
Ok, that's not the best option. Is this something that Articulate is working on?
- Crystal-Horn
  Staff
  7 years ago
  Hi there, Humberto! Storyline is built to product interactive e-learning that doesn't always follow a linear slide path. Also, lots of functions, like triggers and layers, aren't supported in PowerPoint. There's no way to directly export your Storyline content into PowerPoint format.
  
  Why were you looking to reuse your Storyline content in PowerPoint? Tell me more about your needs, and I'll see if I can help find a way!
FMPEResidencyAc
Community Member
6 years ago
I am interested in this too. I don't necessarily need slides in order or functioning as a powerpoint presentation, but I would like to export the slides as PPT, and have the voiceover scripts attached. The reason for this is that while we are developing courses in English, once they are pilot tested and finalized we need to translate them to French. I am hoping to give a picture of each slide to the translator for context, the text of the slide in a way that can be edited, and then the attached voiceover script. I would like the three things for each slide together, but the content for each slide can be a separate entity. The easiest way I can think of to do this would be to export everything to powerpoint, and use the speaker notes for the script. This would save me from having to make each update for the course in two places (the articulate file and a separately maintained file to use for later translation). This is especially helpful when we have multiple versions of something being reviewed for feedback, or if we put something in and later take it out again. If there is an alternate option for exporting for translation, please let me know. Thanks!
KatieRiggio
Staff
6 years ago
Greetings, FMPE. Thanks for that context!

With your setup in mind, I've got a few ideas for us to explore:

If you need a course in multiple languages, Storyline 360's translation features can help with that. Click here to see our handy guide on translating content!

Publish a Course to Word: A great option to use for reviewing courses and making annotations. Keep in mind that this published output won't be editable so any edits will need to be made within the .story file in Storyline.

Publish Projects to Review 360: Stakeholders and subject matter experts can comment on the course in Review 360, and then the author can reference the feedback as they go back to make changes.

Let me know what you think! I'll also share your feedback with the team and let you know if we make changes in this area. 😊
FMPEResidencyAc
Community Member
6 years ago
Thanks for the follow up.

We do publish to review 360 and collect feedback from multiple people. My question was concerning translation, and the ability to export to a powerpoint type format.

As per my message above, I'm really looking to export to a format that allows the translator to see an image of the slide for context, has the text available for translation, and also has the voiceover text all in the same place.

I have found that the XLIFF format doesn't really work for us, as not only does it not provide the image of the slide for context (eg. how much room is available on the slide for the text, etc), but also translators that are translating more to a regional dialect and/or for context often don't seem to know what XLIFF is, let alone know how to use it.

A simple way to pull the main elements together for the translators in one place, and using software that most people have access to / know how to use would be helpful.

Amy suggestions where I can get the image, editable text, and voiceover text all in one place? Without having to maintain separate powerpoint files with changes?

Thanks!
AshleyT-Pollard
Staff
6 years ago
Hi FMPE,

With our translation methods, there isn't a one-stop shop. You'd likely need to use a combo of a Word translation document and a publish to Word so that they could see the slide images.

I'll be curious what other folks in the community have used, and hope they'll weigh in here!
JordanYap
Community Member
6 years ago
Am interested to have whatever we have placed in Storyline and be able to translate back to PowerPoint because there could be a need to re-use the storyline (that's been changed) back into PowerPoint so that it could be used in times where there's no internet connections.