Hey peeps, does anyone know any programs (preferably free) or method of converting powerpoint files to .xml files?

in particular i need something with a batch processing capability to be able to do this, since there is a quite considerable amount of presentation files to cover...

Thanks. N30.

Uhm.. XML for what?

XML is not a defined file format. Do you mean the Office 2003 XML? Or the new Office 2007 "Open" XML? Or the OpenOffice Impress presentation?

Not likely to exist. Powerpoint is a presentation tool, akin to a browser.
XML is a data description tool, and it's only through a special DLL that IE
displays XML data.

What are you attempting to achieve by exporting into XML?

ok.. my church is trailing this new presentation software called Luminous (link: http://kevin.chong.id.au/luminous/ ) and in the section where you can select the songs to add to the presentation list (like slide sorter in powerpoint) it has a button that says "export/import from XML".

Upon further investigation it seems to have this format, after using a few songs as a test by copy/pasting it the old fashion way and exporting it using the button mentioned above (see attached test.xml file), which seems to be a program specific function to easily import song lists from other users of the software.. so i guessed i jumped abit over myself when i saw that function and realizing that theres more to xml..

Now the question is, can i turn some powerpoint slides to this format through any means? even if i have to learn a bit of scripting of some sort..

Two issues; reading the native Powerpoint and then processing it and generating
XML output.
The latter is not trivial and requires in-depth study of XML as well as the
language used to perform the task.

I suggest that the former is unlikely and the latter is far more difficult than you
can imagine.

ok.. so copying and pasting it is...

thanks for the input
n30.

openoffice will do this.

ok.. care to expand?

I would expect this for Word and Excel as it's but a rewrite of the RTF outputs,
but Powerpoint Slides with graphics and transition effects?