BATCH IMPORT images into PowerPoint

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How can I batch import lots of pictures into PowerPoint?
If you have PowerPoint XP (2002) or higher you can choose Insert, Picture, From File and select multiple picture files. When you click OK, they'll all be inserted at one time onto the current slide.

But more likely you want one picture per slide. And it'd be nice if PowerPoint would insert new slides, one per image, right? Right. So read on ...

Free PowerPoint PhotoAlbums

If you have PowerPoint 2002 or 2003, you can choose Insert, Picture, New Photo Album. If you have PowerPoint 2000, use the free Microsoft Photo Album add-in for PowerPoint 2000. But before using Photo Albums, read this.

Other options

MVP Shyam Pillai has written an incredibly useful, full-featured Image Importer Wizard that lets you do virtually any sort of batch image import you might want. And if it doesn't, he's probably added the feature since I wrote this, so now it does.

Pixerter is a relative newcomer with some interesting features.

Are you a Mac user? Macintosh Office MVP Jim Gordon has excellent batch picture importers:

• For PowerPoint 2004
• For PowerPoint 2001 and PowerPoint X

If you're of the tinkering persuasion, you can build your own importer. This will get you started:
Batch Insert a folder full of pictures, one per slide

What's wrong with PhotoAlbum?

The PhotoAlbum feature in PowerPoint 2002/2003 (and the PhotoAlbum add-in for PowerPoint 2000) are free and offer a few features that the other suggestions above don't. But they also have a few drawbacks you should be aware of:

They don't import pictures. Instead, they create rectangles or other shapes, then fill them with pictures. This can cause other problems later (picture links break, you can't crop the pictures and PowerPoint can't compress the pictures the way it can with pictures inserted from file.).

If you use PhotoAlbum, at the very least, be sure to insert the images rather than linking to them. The links it creates will almost surely break if you move the presentation, and they're not repairable the way regular links to inserted picture files are.

On the bright side, if you apply animation effects to the inserted pictures then decide to use a different picture, you only have to right-click, choose Format, and choose another picture for the picture fill. The animations won't be lost.

So long as you don't link the photos and don't need to crop or compress them, you're good to go. If you later need to compress images inserted this way, there's a macro here that'll help:

Why are my PowerPoint files so big? What can I do about it?
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00062.htm

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

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