Windows – How to embed video in PowerPoint with relative paths

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I'm using PowerPoint 2003. Does anyone know how to embed a video in a PowerPoint presentation in such a way that it can be moved to another computer?

Possible solutions I'm considering:

  • Actually embed the video file into the powerpoint file. This would be ideal, but I don't know how to do this.
  • Insert a reference to the video into the presentation. I need this to be a relative path, though, not an absolute path.

Best Answer

Note: doesn't work for PowerPoint 2003, only for new pptx files (since 2007)

Seems like relative paths are supported, they are just not straightforward to implement. For example if your Powerpoint presentation is in the MyFiles folder, and the MyMovie.avi is in the Media folder inside MyFiles. The trick is to edit the xml files inside the Powerpoint file:

  • Make a copy of your presentation as Presentation.pptx (just to keep the original safe).
  • Rename your Presentation.pptx file into Presentation.pptx.zip
  • Open the resulting zip file by clicking on it.
  • It will open as a folder. Inside it, go to ppt, then slides, then _rels
  • You will see files called slide1.xml.rels etc.
  • Copy (drag and drop) all those to another place, outside the archive.
  • Now open the file corresponding to the number of your slide with video with some editor (for example, Notepad).
  • Look for the line that says something like: Target="file:///C:\MyFiles\Media\MyMovie.avi"
  • If your Powerpoint presentation is in the MyFiles folder, and the MyMovie.avi is in the Media folder inside MyFiles, then change the above line to: Target="Media\MyMovie.avi"
  • Save the slide1.xml.rels file (or whatever number it was), then drag it back to that archive (that is actually a Powerpoint file), and then rename the archive back to Presentation.pptx
  • This is it. Now you should be able to carry around the folder MyFiles with the presentation and with the Media folder inside it that contains your video.

Works for me on Windows 7.

Good luck!

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