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I have a presentation file created in Microsoft PowerPoint and one of the slides contains a attached spreadsheet created in Microsoft Excel.

I'm using the presentation file with LibreOffice Impress and all works fine, except for the attached file.

The slide with the file looks like the figure below: LibreOfffice Impress

When I click in the "file", I just have a icon and if I right-click, my options are just image options (copy,cut,save figure, etc...see the image below). In PowerPoint, a simple double-click opens the file, but the same not occurs in LibreOffice and I don't found any other menu option to get the file.

options when doubleclick

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  • What happens if you convert the excel spreadsheet to LibreOffice Calc?
    – DavidPostill
    Oct 27, 2015 at 20:34
  • @DavidPostill I can't do it. When I click, I just have a icon and if I right-click, my options are just image options (copy,cut,save figure, etc...). In PowerPoint, a simple double-click opens the file, but the same not occurs in LibreOffice.
    – James
    Oct 28, 2015 at 10:59

2 Answers 2

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It looks like Impress doesn't have the ability to insert an object as an icon, and so doesn't know what to do with objects that are represented as icons (instead of looking like Excel, in this case).

Options I can think of:

  • Getting someone with Office to save the object as a file and send it to you
  • Getting the document's author to insert it the regular way instead of as an icon, since Impress would then give you "Edit" and "Save Copy as..." choices
  • Using the free PowerPoint Viewer, if you're running Windows (assuming it handles these objects correctly—can someone confirm?)
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  • Thank you for your response! Actually, I'm running it in Ubuntu, so, for now I'm asking for someone with windows and office to get the file to me. However, I'm looking for other alternative solutions and it looks like a good improvement for LibreOffice
    – James
    May 16, 2016 at 13:56
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*.pptx is actually a standard ZIP file with certain directory structure that contains some XML and attachments as files. Those embedded objects are attached as files, too.

You can rename (or copy, or link) it to something.zip and just unpack the contents to find embedded files:

$ ln -s "IT Department.pptx" "IT Department.pptx.zip"
$ unzip "IT Department.pptx.zip"
$ ls -1 ppt/embeddings
Microsoft_PowerPoint_Presentation.pptx
Microsoft_PowerPoint_Presentation1.pptx
Microsoft_PowerPoint_Presentation2.pptx
oleObject1.bin
oleObject2.bin

(I suggest to create and work in a subdirectory to make cleaning the mess easier afterwards.)

In this case three embedded files are obvious PowerPoint documents, for the remaining bin files you may determine what they are with the file tool:

$ file oleObject1.bin
..., Name of Creating Application: Microsoft Office Word, ...
$ file oleObject2.bin
..., Name of Creating Application: Microsoft Office PowerPoint, ...

(or you may look inside and infer the right application from it).

Then, you can rename them to e.g. oleObject1.doc and oleObject2.ppt and open with LibreOffice.

What is left is to determine "which one is where in the presentation". It should be possible by examining the main xml document (ppt/presentation.xml), but that's very cumbersome. In my case I found that from the context.

It's a pity the LibreOffice still lacks this feature, though!

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