Power Point...Security Question

How would you lock a Power Point presentation so that it can be played; but, not changed? I’m specifically trying to protect a company logo from being “taken” out of the presentation or copied.

Would Tools->options->security and adding a password to modify do it?

You can also save it as a “PowerPoint show” instead of as a “presentation.”

Go to “save as,” and in the drop-down menu of "save as type"s, scroll down until you see “PowerPoint show.” It only allows the file to be played, not edited or even viewed in the editing window.

As long as there is some way to view the presentation, I think it is possible to copy the logo. Even if you don’t do it as a copy operation from PowerPoint, you can still take a screen shot.

I often convert PowerPoints to PDF files for distribution to avoid editing and redistributing something that doesn’t reflect the original work, but even that can’t prevent copying an image.

It is very difficult to present an image to someone on a computer screen and make it impossible for them to capture it. The computer, after all, has to have the image in order to display it. I would even say it’s impossible but I hate to say anything’s impossible.

Are you going to give other people the file? If so there is no way to prevent something like a screen capture to get the logo.

Of course, if you open Powerpoint and then the PP presentation, it’s relatively easy to convert from a PPS file to a PPT file and edit it all you want.

I don’t think you even need to convert it. I just tried this in the office and I could open a pps file directly with powerpoint and edit it.

That’s not true at all of course. You can launch PPT first, then File | Open the PPS and edit it to your heart’s content. Also, no “converting” is necessary.

You cannot take a screenshot when full screen slide show is running. You can, however, take one of a Slide Show in a Window, but the resolution of the logo itself would be rather poor and would take some serious tweaking to look good as the inserted graphic on its own.

Rick is correct, depending on the version and platform you are running. If you tell me what version of PPT you have and what platform, I can tell you how to do it. Bear in mind that password protected WinPPT files will not open at all in MacPPT nor on earlier unsupported WinPPT versions. MacPPT has no password protection.

I just did a screen capture of slide show and it worked fine. I tried both a pps file and a ppt file in slide show mode.

The fundamental problem is that it is very difficult to give someone a computer file and through technical trickery restrict them to a small subset of things that are normally done to files.

Full screen Slide Show? What version of PPT on what platform?

Full screen slide show mode.

Powerpoint 2003 (11.8110.8132) SP2
Windows XP pro version 2002 service pack 2

A not to uncommon setup I would think.

Huh. Win folks must’ve changed the way they layer it. My bad.

There are programs that will let you take screen caps of the freaking BIOS screen, so I doubt anyone sufficiently interested in grabbing this image would be hindered seriously.

So, does this mean that your logo isn’t on the company webpage? On print literature?

Really, if someone wants your logo they are going to get it.

-Joe