Articulate Presenter
How to Convert PowerPoint Presentations
by Aaron Sotala
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Short List
Intro
Computer Requirements
Loading Articulate
Opening the Presentation
Options for Attaching Sound Files
Recording in Articulate
Importing a Sound File
Publishing a Presentation
The Published Presentation
You’re Done
Additional Resources
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The Short List
To Record Narration
1. Select slide to narrate
2. Go to Articulate menu and select Record Narration
3. Record Narration window appears
4. Click Record button and narrate slide
5. Click Stop Record to finish recording
6. Listen to sound file, using Play button.
7. If narration is satisfactory, close Record Narration window
8. If changes needed, re-record narration from step 4
To Import a Sound File
1. Go to Articulate menu and select Import Audio
2. Import Audio window appears, with a listing of all slides in presentation
3. Double-click on slide to be paired with the sound file
4. Locate sound file in the computer directory window that appears
5. Attach sound file by double-clicking file, or selecting and clicking Open button
To Publish
1. Go to Articulate menu and select Publish
2. Choose mode you wish to publish in (Web or CD)
3. Make sure details (such as publish location) are what you desire
4. Click Publish button
5. Preview presentation after it is done
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Articulate Presenter
How to Convert PowerPoint Presentations
THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE is a short tutorial on how to use a few of the basic functions of the
Articulate Presenter software. It accounts for about 90% of what most faculty tell us they actually use the
software to do.
However, Presenter does have more advanced features that can be explored to add additional elements and
interactivity to your presentations, especially when used in conjunction with other software such as Flash.
More detailed information regarding these options can be obtained by visiting Articulate’s web site listed at
the end of this article under Additional Resources, or by contacting our office for additional instruction.
Computer Requirements
Hardware

PC running Windows, equipped with a sound card

Microphone, preferably with USB connector
Software

Microsoft PowerPoint

A current browser program such as Internet Explorer 7
or Firefox 2, with the Flash plug-in installed
For Detailed Requirements Listing
http://www.articulate.com/products/presenter-systemrequirements.php
Loading Articulate Presenter onto Your Computer
THE PRESENTER SOFTWARE is an online download. You need a license number to install it on your
computer.
The Associate Deans for CALS and Extension, Mark Rieger and Joan Dusky, sometimes have a limited
number of licenses available for faculty and staff use. If you would like to obtain a copy of the software,
please contact the appropriate Dean.
Once you have been given authorization for a license from the Dean, you will be sent an email from our
department. It will contain the license number assigned to you, a URL for you to visit for the download,
and a brief set of directions on how to do so.
You may need to contact the IT coordinator for your area to help you download the software, since most
IFAS computers require an administrator level access to load software onto them.
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Opening the Presentation to be Converted
UNLIKE MOST SOFTWARE, Articulate Presenter does not have its own interface for you to use. Instead,
it actually adds a new menu into your PowerPoint software’s interface.
1.
Open your PowerPoint (.ppt) file in PowerPoint
2.
Notice that if you have loaded the Articulate Presenter software onto your computer, a new
dropdown menu named Articulate will now appear on the right side of your dropdown menus
within PowerPoint.
3. This menu contains everything you need to convert your files.
4. If you need to record or attach sound files to your slides, read the Options for Attaching Sound
Files section. If you are ready to publish your presentation, go to the Publishing Your PowerPoint
Presentation section.
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Options for Attaching Sound Files
TO AVOID CONVERSION PROBLEMS, we recommend either using the “record” option or the “import
audio” option within the Articulate Menu to attach sound files to your slides.
There are several ways you can attach a sound file to your slides, but not all work well. We have found that
sound recorded or attached through PowerPoint itself can sometimes result in errors when processed by
Articulate.
Recording Narration Through the Articulate Menu
1.
Under the Articulate dropdown menu, select the Record Narration option
2.
A small Record Narration window should appear.
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3.
If you have a microphone plugged in, and are ready to make your voice recording, press the
Record button and begin.
When you are finished, press the button again (which has changed to say Stop Recording).
It is a good practice to leave a small pause in the recording just before and just after you speak, to
ensure that the computer doesn’t accidentally cut off the beginning or ending of what you are
saying.
4.
Your recording has now been saved automatically as an .mp3 sound file and attached to the slide.
For more information regarding these sound files, see the Record Narration Sound Files section
below.
5.
Use the play button to listen to the recording you have just made.
If you are satisfied with the result, close the Record Narration window and move on to the next
slide.
If there is anything unsatisfactory with the sound clip, you can simply record over it by clicking on
the Record button again and recording a new narration.
Note that this will cause the new recording to replace the original file entirely. While this
recording tool works well, it is limited. It has no ability to edit a sound clip.
If you desire to edit your recordings rather than replacing them entirely, you may want to consider
using an outside sound recording/editor program such as Audacity or Sound Forge. Then follow
the directions in the Importing a Sound File Through the Articulate Menu section.
If you have finished recording all your narrations and are satisfied with the results, you are ready
to export your presentation and should go to the Publishing Your Presentation section below.
Record Narration Sound Files
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If you only create sound recordings using Presenter on a single computer you may not care exactly where
those sound files are located. However, if you ever need to move the original PowerPoint file to another
location on your computer, or onto another computer entirely, and wish to retain those sound files,
knowing how and where those files are located it critical.
Points to Know
1. Using the Record Narration function creates a folder with the same name as your PowerPoint file
to store the resulting sound files in.
2.
This folder is located in the same location as the PowerPoint file itself, (ie., desktop, My
Documents, etc.).
3.
This folder contains a subfolder called narration, which contains the sound files. The default
setting for Presenter is to create two versions of your sound recording in the .MP3, and .wav
formats, (.mp3 is a smaller format good for web transmission, while .wav files can contain higher
quality sound).
4.
Important: The sound files contained in the narration sub-file are linked to your PowerPoint file.
Note that they are not embedded. This means if you wish to move your PowerPoint file to
another location on your computer, or to another computer, you must also move the folder
Articulate Presenter created of the same name as your PowerPoint file, and all of it’s contents, to
the same location.
Importing a Sound File Through the Articulate Menu
1.
Under the Articulate dropdown menu, select the Import Audio option.
2.
A small Import Audio window should appear.
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This window contains a list of all the slides in your presentation, with two columns.


The left column contains the title of each slide.
The right column contains the name and location of the sound file attached to the slide.
Note: If you haven’t attached sound files to the slides yet, the cells in the right column will be
blank.
If you attached sound files using PowerPoint, and they are not properly linked for Articulate
conversion, these cells may have a message such as “Narration Recorded”.
3.
To attach a sound file, select the slide you wish to attach a sound file to from the lefthand column
and double-click it.
4.
A second small window will appear, allowing you to browse your computer’s file directory.
Locate the proper sound file you wish to attach to the slide and either double-click the file, or
select it and press the Open button.
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5.
Notice that after you have done this, the name of your sound file along with a pathway to where it
is located on your computer is now listed in the right column cell for that slide.
6.
Once you have done this for each slide that needs a sound file, you are ready to publish your
presentation.
Publishing Your Presentation
Once your presentation is completed to your satisfaction, you can then publish it using the Articulate
dropdown menu within PowerPoint.
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1.
Go to the Articulate dropdown menu, and select the first option, Publish.
2.
A Publish window will appear. It contains a number of options for publishing your presentation.
You should take some time to look over these options, and read through the online documentation
on how you can customize your presentation using this window.
To publish your presentation in the simplest manner possible:
a.
Select either Web or CD from the menu on the left. Both options produce a nearly identical
set of presentation files. The main difference is that the CD version will create an autostart
file, so that if you burn the presentation files onto a disk it will be able to automatically start
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up if the viewer plays the CD on a computer running Windows. Many faculty like the CD
option since it allows them the option to load the same set of files onto the Web or onto a CD.
b.
On the right side of the Publish window, under the heading Publish Location, the software
will indicate where it has automatically selected to save your published files of the
presentation.
The default location is within you’re My Documents folder, within a subfolder it will create
called Articulate Presenter.
Make sure this is actually where you want them to be located. If it isn’t, just select the desired
location in your computer’s file directory using this option.
3.
c.
Below the location info is a set of four options. You don’t need to touch these unless you wish
to rename your project, or customize your interface. Left alone they will simply create a
default version of the presentation interface with the same title as the original PowerPoint file.
d.
Click the Publish button.
The computer may now take up to several minutes to convert your presentation into a published
format. Once it finishes, it will give you the option of viewing the published version of the
presentation. We recommend you preview the presentation and review all of it at this point, to
make sure that the content from each slide has converted properly.
It should pull up an Internet browser window, in whichever program your computer has set up as
its default (e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox.)
Your Published Presentation
The Articulate Presentation Interface
Your published version of the presentation consists of three sections.
1.
A menu on the left contains a series of buttons for each of the slides in the presentation, so that a
viewer can move back and forth between them, just as they could in the original PowerPoint file.
2.
The main stage area contains the slides.
3.
On the bottom is a sound player menu that allows the viewer to control the playback of the sound
clip attached to the slide. If they wish to remain on a given slide and not be forwarded to the next
automatically when the sound file finishes playing, they should hit pause using this player
interface.
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Where is the Published Version of the Presentation?
Remember the Publish Location setting on the Publish window? It listed where your files would be
published.
If you have forgotten where that was, just hit the Publish option in PowerPoint, so that the Publish window
comes up again. Copy down the location it lists for your presentation, since it should default to the same
location used the last time. Then simply cancel since you don’t need to publish again.
Examining the Actual Files Created by Articulate
Once you’ve checked the presentation’s playback in a browser to your satisfaction, you should close the
browser and familiarize yourself briefly with the actual files created by the Articulate program. This is
because you will need to upload them to a website and link to the presentation so that others can access it,
or transfer the presentation to another medium.
There will be one main folder created by Articulate. By default it will have the same name as the
PowerPoint file it was created from, unless you specifically gave it a different one when publishing.
Within the folder will be two main folders and one or more files (this example is the result of publishing
the presentation in the CD format).
The data folder contains all of the content from your presentation as a series of Flash (.swf) files.
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The player folder (not to be confused with the file of the same name) contains all the files that create the
interface the presentation will play in.
The player file (player.html) is the most important one for you to be aware of. This is the file you need to
link to for the presentation to play when you place it on the web or some other location.
Uploading Your Presentation to the Web or other Media
ONCE FAMILIAR WITH THE FILES, you are ready to make them accessible to others, either by placing
them on the web or transferring them to other media such as a CD.
Note that loading a presentation onto the Web is slightly different than burning it onto a disk.
It is also important to be aware that Articulate has only automated the files needed to place a single
presentation onto a disk or other storage device. If you desire to place more than one presentation onto a
disk, you will need to provide users with a way to access the individual presentations.
For uploading to the Web:
1. Upload the main folder containing all the presentation files created by Articulate to your site.
2. Create a hyperlink to the presentation by linking to the file player.html within the main folder.
For copying a single presentation to a disk:
1. Burn only the contents of the main folder containing the presentation files created by Articulate
onto a disk.
2. On PCs running windows, the autorun.inf file will cause the player.html file to automatically start
in a browser. For Mac users, provide directions telling them to open the file player.html in a
browser to view the presentation.
For copying multiple presentations to a disk:
1. Burn each of the main folders containing the presentations created by Articulate onto a disk.
2. Because there are multiple presentations, you cannot use their individual autostart files to open
them.
3. There are two options to provide users with access to the presentations:
a. Provide users with instructions to look into each presentation’s main folder and open the
player.html file in a browser.
b. Build an interface with hyperlinks leading to each of the presentations’ player.html files.
This is most easily done by creating either an ordinary Web .html file, or some other type
such as a Flash interface. This single interface can then have an autostart script, allowing
it to automatically play on PCs. Mac users will need directions to open the file containing
your main menu interface in a browser.
Note: If you are not familiar with creating html or Flash files, contact a web designer or
programmer to help you build this. Our office is always available to help with creating
them.
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You’re Done
That covers everything you need to master the basic functions of Articulate Presenter, and how to make
them available to your audience via the Web or other media.
If you would like to learn more about the capabilities of this software, we recommend taking a look on
Articulate’s website listed under Additional Resources below.
If you have any questions, or need help using Articulate Presenter, give us a call at 392-3894 or email
Aaron Sotala at asotala@ufl.edu.
Additional Resources
Online Product Support
http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter/
Topics Covered by Site
1. Getting Started (flash presentation)
2. Overview
3. Top Questions
4. Knowledge Base
5. Online Manual (online & PDF versions)
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