Extracting all text from a powerpoint file in VBA

Question

I have a huge set of powerpoint files from which I want to extract all the text and just lump it all into one big text file. Each source (PPT) file has multiple pages (slides). I do not care about formatting - only the words.

I could do this manually with a file by just ^A ^C in PPT, followed by ^V in notepad; then page down in the PPT, and repeat for each slide in the powerpoint. (Too bad I can't just do a ^A that would grab EVERYTHING ... then I could use sendkey to copy / paste)

But there are many hundreds of these PPTs with different numbers of slides.

It seems like this would be a common thing to want to do, but I can't find an example anywhere.

Does anyone have sample code to do this?

Answer 1

Here's some code to get you started. This dumps all text in slides to the debug window. It doesn't try to format, group or do anything other than just dump.

Sub GetAllText()
Dim p As Presentation: Set p = ActivePresentation
Dim s As Slide
Dim sh As Shape
For Each s In p.Slides
    For Each sh In s.Shapes
        If sh.HasTextFrame Then
            If sh.TextFrame.HasText Then
                Debug.Print sh.TextFrame.TextRange.Text
            End If
        End If
    Next
Next
End Sub

Answer 2

The following example shows code to loop through a list of files based on Otaku's code given above:

Sub test_click2()

Dim thePath As String
Dim src As String
Dim dst As String
Dim PPT As PowerPoint.Application
Dim p As PowerPoint.Presentation
Dim s As Slide
Dim sh As PowerPoint.Shape
Dim i As Integer
Dim f(10) As String

f(1) = "abc.pptx"
f(2) = "def.pptx"
f(3) = "ghi.pptx"

thePath = "C:\Work\Text parsing PPT\"

For i = 1 To 3
  src = thePath & f(i)
  dst = thePath & f(i) & ".txt"

  On Error Resume Next
  Kill dst
  Open dst For Output As #1
    Set PPT = CreateObject("PowerPoint.Application")
    PPT.Activate
    PPT.Visible = True
    'PPT.WindowState = ppWindowMinimized
    PPT.Presentations.Open filename:=src, ReadOnly:=True
    For Each s In PPT.ActivePresentation.Slides
        For Each sh In s.Shapes
            If sh.HasTextFrame Then
                If sh.TextFrame.HasText Then
                    Debug.Print sh.TextFrame.TextRange.Text
                End If
            End If
        Next
    Next
    PPT.ActivePresentation.Close
  Close #1
Next i
Set PPT = Nothing

End Sub