Here’s the deal… I’m a professor, and I create a substantial number of PowerPoint slides each week for my lectures. I’m looking for a way to manage these slides, and it seems that DevonThink might be a good platform on which to build this functionality…
My ideal program would allow me to keep a library of Powerpoint slides that would be keyword searchable (based on text in each slide), and would also allow me to view/export fully formatted slides so I can create new lectures on similar topics without reinventing the wheel, and also without hunting through PowerPoint files containing lecture after lecture for the right slide. Ideally, I’d be able to put slides into categories based on, for example, lecture topic. It would also be great if slides could be resized ‘on the fly’ ala iPhoto’s and DevonThink’s size-slider. Basically, I’m looking for an iPhoto- or DevonThink-for-PowerPoint application (preferably DevonThink, as the search functionality rocks – I just threw iPhoto in there because the front end is nice).
Here’s a critical point… The slides need to be individually accessible so I can grab one or another without dealing with the entire slideshow/file.
Although Keynote may do this, or at least something close (never used it, so I’m not sure), I need to keep using PowerPoint for a variety of reasons. I also need this to be as seamless as possible… If I have to jump through hoops to go back and forth between whatever solution I come up with and PowerPoint, or if I have to worry about losing formatting, then I’m better off just hunting through the separate lectures as I do now. Ideally, I’d be able to drag and drop slides in and out.
One possible solution would be to create a huge PowerPoint file into which I dump all of my slides. However, this won’t allow categorization, and the find feature leaves all of the slides visible, whether or not they match. It does highlight the matching slides but, by leaving the others visible, picking through them is like looking for a needle in a haystack. When searching, I’d like it to just display the ‘hits’ while hiding the non-matches.
I know this is a lot to ask for, but this seems like it would be a killer app. I’ve actually found something that seems to do most of this, but it’s for the PC – no mac version available. I’m skeptical as to whether an app such as this currently exists for the Mac, but DT is pretty darn close – if only it could handle PowerPoint slides!
This would be a killer feature, and worth a heck of a lot more than you’re currently charging for DT. I’d pay through the nose for this!