How to extract media from Office document
by Volker Weber
I often have to deal with people who do not know how to handle files that are not made with Office. They will do things like embed photos in Word or PowerPoint documents. Short of educating the users who do this, there is a simple workaround.
Rename the Office documt to .zip and let the operating system unpack it. In this example I copied the "Modius users.pptx" file (1) and renamed it to "Modius users.zip" (2), then I let Windows 10 extract it to "Modius users" (3). You will find ppt inside that folder (4), and media inside the ppt folder (5). Bingo (6).
This works with other file types like docx just the same.
Comments
Thanks for sharing.
Used to receive press releases with photos embedded in the docs. Many media outlets keep asking for separate word and pic files :-).
The workaround in my reply-to-email from them: copy the pic and paste it into Paint.
Your method is easier though.
There are many ways that are better than copy/paste. Save the document as web page for instance. This also creates a media folder.
For Mac users, there is
File Juicer http://www.echoone.com/filejuicer/index.php
It extracts images from pretty much any file. I use it quite often to extract photos from PDFs.
Beware of the interface, though.
Thanks vowe, I wasn't aware of this awesome stunt.
Works with OpenOffice/LibreOffice too.
The combination of structured text (XML/Json) and assets in a zip file with a custom extension is quite popular. iMindmanager does that too.
At least for Office‘s *.*x formats, the underlying base specification is Open Package Convention (ISO/IEC 29500). AFAIK this is used in other file formats as well and for example, .NET has classes to handle such content. Indeed, pretty powerful and if you know the inner workings, even foolproof (i.e. fools using it cannot cause too much damage since workarounds like the above can undo foolish things).
I knew the zip thing, but...
„They will do things like embed photos in Word or PowerPoint documents. Short of educating the users who do this...“
Now I feel stupid. What *is* the proper way to have images in a word doc?
Wrong question. The answer to thr correct question is: you can send images without embedding them in Word or Powerpoint.
