What is a PPZ file?

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Problem

You have a file with a PPZ extension that's supposed to be a PowerPoint presentation, but you can't open it.

Solution

A PPZ file might be a PowerPoint Animation file, a streaming format intended for Web use, not for exchanging presentations among PowerPoint users., but more likely it's a "packed" PowerPoint file, created by Pack and Go.

Pack and Go is a feature of PowerPoint 97 through 2002. This Microsoft Knowledgebase article describes the process.

Pack and Go allows a PowerPoint user to pack up a presentation or presentations, linked files and embedded fonts into a single .PPZ file. At the same time, it creates a PNGSETUP.EXE file that allows the recipient to unpack the PPZ. Without the PNGSETUP.EXE file, you can't get at the PowerPoint presentation inside the PPZ.

If you can't locate a copy of PNGSETUP.EXE, you can make your own with PowerPoint 97 - 2002:

• Start PowerPoint (97 - 2002)
• Open any PPT file (or create a new blank one)
• Use Pack and Go to pack it to any convenient folder.
• After Pack and Go finishes, you'll find a copy of PNGSETUP.EXE in the target folder.
• Copy it to the same folder as the PPZ file you're trying to open and run it there to unpack the PPZ.

PowerPoint 2003 and up no longer include the Pack and Go feature, so you won't be able to use this trick.

WinZIP can also extract the contents of PPZ files and really, WinZIP should be part of every PowerPoint user's toolkit.

Or you can download our packed example files. Don't run these from the link. Right-click the link and choose Save target As (or use the appropriate equivalent for your browser) and save the files to a convenient location. Then copy PNGSETUP.EXE to the same folder as the PPZ you need to open and run it from there.

Tiny example packed presentation (2.8kb)

PNGSETUP.EXE (54kb)

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