Include PowerPoint viewer into my WPF application

Question

I want to display my PowerPoint presentation into a WPF application.

Requirements:

• Free (except PowerPoint is already installed on the PC)
• Has to be integrated into my WPF application, not an external one
• User must have the possibility to advance to the next slide, or go back
• Show animations

I tried 2 solutions:

• Using DSOFramer, but they recommend to not use it anymore, and it doesn't support 2010 files. It's a no go.
• Using Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint, but it opens the PowerPoint as an external application...
• Tried the tool http://www.edrawsoft.com but it cost like 3500$ the licence

I don't know where to go with this.... Thank you.

Edit:

Few months later, the only "good" solution that I can get all what I want (with animations, sound etc..) is to embed a c++ control... if wanyone have a solution for WPF and it's managed, I would like to know.

As for the given answer:

• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304662 : there is some problem using this with 2007 + files vs old one...

Thanks

Answer 1

I just know that with DevExpress 12 it is possible to integrate PowerPoint, Excel, Word and Outlook as a Control. So you can put a PowerPoint Control on your form like a Textbox. DevExpress is a really nice framework but the disadvantage is, that one license costs 900 dollars.

Answer 2

These links may help you

1. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304662
2. Embed PowerPoint Viewer in C# Win Form

I found more codeproject article about hosting Powerpoint in WPF

http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/118676/Embedding-PowerPoint-presentation-player-into-a-WP

Answer 3

Not the cleanest of solutions, but one we had to go for a few years ago in a .NET 1.1 application.

1.) Provided that there is any application installed on the client system that a) can open Powerpoint files and b) has also installed a browser plugin to view them inside a browser window, you could use the WebBrowser control and Navigate() to the Powerpoint file.

If there is, for example, a MS office or OpenOffice installation on the client system, this would allow you to view Powerpoint presentations inside, say, Internet Explorer.

2.) An alternative approach was to use the Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer and embed in a WinForms control. Unfortunately we had to use a very old version, I think for Office 2000, because newer version did not support embedding anymore as Microsoft told us. This might have changed in the meantime, but I do not know about that.