How do I convert 300 PPT lectures PPTX without doing it manually?

[BigToque]

As the title says, I've got 300+ powerpoint files from class lecture notes that are in .PPT format that I'd like to convert to .PPTX.

Is there any way to automate this? A Google search hasn't been too helpful.

 

[Fardringle]

Is there a specific reason why you want to do this? All newer versions of Powerpoint should be able to open the .PPT files without any problems.

I haven't used any of these as I haven't had any real reason to do so, but there seem to be quite a few options here: https://www.google.com/search?q=con...a:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=nts

 

[BigToque]

Is there a specific reason why you want to do this? All newer versions of Powerpoint should be able to open the .PPT files without any problems.

I haven't used any of these as I haven't had any real reason to do so, but there seem to be quite a few options here: https://www.google.com/search?q=con...a:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=nts

From the few files I've converted manually, the file size is decreasing by at least 50%, and most of these lectures are at least 100 MB or so.

There's about 5GB of files right now. Way too big to upload.

 

[jkauff]

I don't know if there's a 3rd party tool to do what you want, but there are lots of Office tools out there. Because they're marketed to corporations, though, they're not cheap. The Microsoft Office mailing lists are usually a good place to look if Googling doesn't turn anything up.

 

[Mushkins]

You could always write an autohotkey script to do it. It's the rough and dirty way, but just run through the sequence of keyboard commands to open a file, save as, alt-f4 to close powerpoint, arrow key down, repeat x300. Put something like /wait 10 between each command to give powerpoint ample time to open and close and load and run it overnight. Make sure to sort the folder by filetype so it lists all the .ppt in a row without .pptx showing up between and causing repeat saves.

Might take a half hour of scripting and testing, and then you wake up to a folder full of exactly what you want.