More on Using Open Office to convert MS documents

Viggo Navarsete made the following comment on my recent post about using OpenOffice.org to convert MS Word documents.

...I have a similar problem at my project, where we want to embed powerpoint presentations into an existing pdf-document. A solution could perhaps be to use openoffice to convert the powerpoint presentation into jpegs, and then embed these pictures into the pdf?

How is it possible to convert powerpoint to jpegs using openoffice in java?...

I have not used OpenOffice to convert MS Powerpoint documents, but it is, apparently, possible. A list of OpenOffice conversion 'types' is here. I cannot vouch for any other than the one I have used (MS Word to HTML, XML, text etc.), but it is a place to start.

Regarding the extraction of Powerpoint slides as JPEGs - one hopeful sign is that the Word conversion utility I have used did extract images embedded in Word documents and save them as local files.

A completely different approach might be to convert the Powerpoint document to OpenOffice's native (XML) format, and then use something like Apache's FOP to create a PDF from this by writing the appropriate stylesheet.

Of course this might be possible using a combination of Powerpoint and Adobe Acrobat, using macro(s) to 'print to PDF' from within Powerpoint....?