A tip for converting your PowerPoint presentation to the Symphony format...
Category IBM/Lotus
For Lotusphere 2009, all our presentation files have to be in the .ODP format, which means using Symphony or OpenOffice.org. For the first time, IBM is only supplying the Lotusphere presentation template in .OTP format. If you've ever done presentations before, you're probably planning on pulling content from existing slides to make up your session(s) slides for January.
Veterans know what this means... the dreaded "conversion".
I'm working with Chris Blatnick on our presentation, and I'm using two existing PowerPoint presentations as the base. I'll admit to never having worked with the presentation side of Symphony before, so I went digging for that single menu option that would magically transform PPT to ODP with a single click.
Unfortunately (or because I are stupid), it wasn't that easy.
I could find the existing templates by using the menu command of Layout > Page Design. But that seems to assume you already have the template(s) you want to use in a template library somewhere. And "somewhere" did not include the option to find the ls2009.otp file on my Windows XP desktop. To save someone a few minutes of time, I found it's much easier if you just put the template where Symphony expects to find the rest of them. And for my default Notes 8.5 beta install, its:
(deep breath)
C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\framework\shared\eclipse\plugins\com.ibm.productivity.tools.template.en_3.5.0.20080815-1740\layout
If you put the template there, then it shows up under the More... option when you use the Layout > Page Design menu function. From there, you can apply the template to either the existing page or all pages except for the title page. I did one apply for the title page, and selected the "all pages except for title" to get the rest.
It's far from ready for prime-time, but at least I'm now working in .ODP format with the correct template. And at least for me, that was a significant part of the battle.
For Lotusphere 2009, all our presentation files have to be in the .ODP format, which means using Symphony or OpenOffice.org. For the first time, IBM is only supplying the Lotusphere presentation template in .OTP format. If you've ever done presentations before, you're probably planning on pulling content from existing slides to make up your session(s) slides for January.
Veterans know what this means... the dreaded "conversion".
I'm working with Chris Blatnick on our presentation, and I'm using two existing PowerPoint presentations as the base. I'll admit to never having worked with the presentation side of Symphony before, so I went digging for that single menu option that would magically transform PPT to ODP with a single click.
Unfortunately (or because I are stupid), it wasn't that easy.
I could find the existing templates by using the menu command of Layout > Page Design. But that seems to assume you already have the template(s) you want to use in a template library somewhere. And "somewhere" did not include the option to find the ls2009.otp file on my Windows XP desktop. To save someone a few minutes of time, I found it's much easier if you just put the template where Symphony expects to find the rest of them. And for my default Notes 8.5 beta install, its:
(deep breath)
C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\framework\shared\eclipse\plugins\com.ibm.productivity.tools.template.en_3.5.0.20080815-1740\layout
If you put the template there, then it shows up under the More... option when you use the Layout > Page Design menu function. From there, you can apply the template to either the existing page or all pages except for the title page. I did one apply for the title page, and selected the "all pages except for title" to get the rest.
It's far from ready for prime-time, but at least I'm now working in .ODP format with the correct template. And at least for me, that was a significant part of the battle.
Comments
Posted by Mitch Cohen At 07:20:09 On 23/11/2008 | - Website - |