Another frequently asked question is how to get PowerPoint files into SMART Notebook. The easy answer is to do a Smart Print Capture.

First open your PowerPoint file and go to File and then choose Print. In the drop down menu tha allows you to choose which printer you want to use, select Smart Print Capture. Choose your other options for example do you want a note taking page with three slides or each page to have one slide. Once your options are correct, click print and the slides will appear in either a new Notebook file if you didn’t have a Notebook file open or in the Notebook file that is already open.

This solution, however makes each PowerPoint slide into an image. If you had any interactive elements, animations or transitions in your PowerPoint file, they are now gone. Many teachers have created review games with numerous links so this solution will not work. Typically these teachers have neither the time or the desire to recreate the file in Notebook even if it is a much more interactive program.

This issue had me stumped until I came across a free program for Windows called iSpring Converter. This little program will take files created in PowerPoint and convert them into a Flash file while preserving sounds, animations, transitions, and hyperlinks. The main idea behind the app is that it is an easy way to display PowerPoint files in a website but since Notebook easily handles Flash files it is a handy and fast way to put PowerPoint files into Notebook. As a bonus, iSpring Converter compresses the PowerPoint files as it converts making the resulting Flash file smaller in size than the actual PowerPoint file. Since each PowerPoint exists on one Notebook page, you can even have more than one PowerPoint file in one Notebook file.

The steps are pretty easy. When you install iSpring Converter it will place several new buttons in PowerPoint. (2007 version seen below, 2003 versions and below will have similar buttons.)

Open the PowerPoint file that you want to convert. Press the Publish button (as seen above) in the iSpring toolbar. Name your new Flash file and choose where you would like to save the file. Then publish your PowerPoint file.

After iSpring has converted your file, open Smart Notebook. Go to the Insert menu and chose Flash File… Navigate to the .swf file that you created and insert. Once in Notebook you can easily resize it to fill the whole Notebook page. There is also a button that allows you to go to full screen mode.

iSpring also offers iSpring Presenter as a paid product that allows a user to have more control over the Flash files that you can create as well as allowing you to create quizzes.

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