HTML "Round-tripping" to repair corruption
PowerPoint 2000 and later has the ability to "round trip" -- that is, to save to HTML then reopen the HTML as a new PowerPoint presentation.
This has an interesting and very useful side effect: it can clean out junk and repair corruption in the PPT file that you can't get rid of any other way.
How-To
Simply doing an HTML save from PowerPoint may not get the job done. There are a few settings you need to make first.
Luckily, PowerPoint MVP Glen Millar has written this thorough tutorial.
If you use PowerPoint 2007, you save as HTML a bit differently than Glen describes:
- Choose Office Button | Save As
- In the Save As dialog box that appears, choose Save as type: and pick Web Page (*.htm;*.html)
- To set the other options that Glen mentions, click Tools then click Web Options... on the drop-down menu that appears.
If you use PowerPoint 2010, you can't save as HTML any longer. But you can try it using our Starter Set add-in as described below.
A simpler approach
Use the free PPTools StarterSet add-in. Install it, open your presentation, then hold down the Control key while you click the Help (?) button on the Starter Set toolbar. Starter Set will automatically "roundtrip" your presentation for you. Automatically. Couldn't be simpler.