Viewing Powerpoint Email Attachments

Reader Dottie Cox wrote to say that she had received some emails with Powerpoint attachments and wondered how to view them...

Terry, I receive e-mail with atachments that I cannot bring up because of Power Point. I don't have this on my computer.Is this a special program? Can it be downloaded? Your help will be appreciated.

This is one of the typical problems that computer users have — someone sends them a data file for a program that the recipient does not have.

Sometimes, it's a Microsoft Word document. Other times, it might be an Excel spreadsheet, a WordPerfect document, a graphics image in TIF format, something in any number of other proprietary formats.

Often, similar programs will be able to open and read the attachment. Word can usually read WordPerfect documents. The trick is that the WordPerfect "filter" is not installed by default by Word. Once you install the filter from your Word CD (assuming you have Microsoft Word), you have to start Word and then use File > Open to open the attachment — double-clicking seldom works.

PowerPoint is the presentation software program that is part of Microsoft Office. Dottie _could_ buy an expensive copy of Microsoft Office.

On the other hand, she has several free options available.

First, she can download the Powerpoint Viewer program from Microsoft.com. This will play the file. However, it willnot allow her to edit the file at all.

She can also use OpenOffice to view and edit the Powerpoint file if she likes.

The first step would be to download OpenOffice from www.openoffice.org . It reads and writes Word, Excel and Powerpoint formats. Installing OpenOffice is easy now. Early versions were harder to install because they didn't install by the usual process with which Windows users are familiar.

Read more about OpenOffice:
*   OpenOffice. the Free Alternative to Microsoft Office, and
*   OpenOffice

Copyright © 2007-2008 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.