From Powerpoint To Sanity

Currently, I’m working on a small e-learning project which is absolutely killing me mentally.

The work itself is OK, and the ideas behind it are quite cool. However, the people in charge of the project have put together the entire set of e-learning tests in PowerPoint (AKA The Software of the Devil), with one screenshot per PowerPoint Slide.  All told there’s nearly 200 of these – and they’re not necessarily in order.

Now the order doesn’t matter too much – all this stuff is going into a database, and that’ll handle the question order just fine whether or not it’s out of order. However, having them correctly grouped does make it easier during the transfer to process them out of SatanWare into anything remotely usable.

As it is – and this could be because I’m not au fait with Powerpoint, so there may be some esoteric export function or somesuch that would’ve made life easier – I’ve had to go through the following process…

Phase One

1. Select PowerPoint slide.
2. Copy Image to clipboard
3. Go to Image Software of Choice (in this case Fireworks, but Photoshop would’ve worked too)
4. Create new blank image
5. Paste clipboard-copy of image into new image
6. Save new image as filename.jpg.
7. Close new image.
8. Repeat 200 times.

Phase Two

1. Open each new image one by one in Photoshop/Fireworks (I could do it in batches, but again, one-by-one allows for consistency/sanity)
2. Add four new layers for answer options (A,B,C,D) and add a pretty arrow pointing to a possible answer for each one.
3. Make sure that the letter for the correct answer goes to the correct answer
4. Save new image
5. Close new image
6. Repeat 200 times.

In short, it’s utterly soul-destroying.  I’ll just be glad to get it over and done with.