Is there a similar extension available for Microsoft Powerpoint ?

We did an exhaustive review of flashcard learning applications, but as far as we know, there is nothing comparable available for Powerpoint . So maybe today is your day to drop Powerpoint in favor of open-source software like OpenOffice and OpenCards.

OpenOffice is free as it is OpenCards, and it's just a snap to get both running on your system right today.

I have some Powerpoint Presentations, which I would like to use as flashcard sets ? Do I need to recreate them completely from scratch in order to use OpenCards ?

OpenCards is just an extension of OpenOffice, the free office suite. With OpenOffice Impress you can directly import your PowerPoint presentations. 99.9% of all presentations are loaded without any differences (including animations, embedded videos, layout).

Therefore - because anything, which can be loaded into Impress, can serve as flashcard set - you can use OpenCards with all your existing PowerPoint-based flashcard sets.

I've tried OpenCards->Advanced->'Import flashcards' to import some flashcards. Nothing happened. Why?

OpenCards can only import CSV-files with two tab-separated columns currently. No matter what kind of flashcard software you've used before, in most cases you should be able to transform your flashcards into such a format (via the export function of your previously used flashcard software). Try to download and import this example-file to see how it works. OpenCards attempts to guess the used character encoding automatically, so you should not have to worry about it.

Can I use the keyboard instead of the mouse while learning flashcards ?

Sure. For long-term learning you can using the following layout:

For "Well" and "Hardly" both keys need to be pressed at the same time. There is currently no way to change these shortcuts.

Other useful shortcuts which might help you while learning flashcards with your keyboard are:

• 'Home' which re-centers the current flashcard. This is helpful if you've browsed around in your flashcard-set and lost the item which is currently being reviewed.
• 'F1' which opes the OpenCards-help in your browser. This help is context-sensitive wherever possible.

What are the meanings of the feedback-buttons in the LongTerm Learning Dialog ?

How can I copy my presentations to another computer without loosing the last learn-session state ?

Just go ahead. OpenCards stores all your learn session information within the presentation file itself.

How can I preserve the category tree when migrating to a new computer ?

OpenCards stores the category tree (inlcuding the locations of the card-files attached to the categories) in the file ${OpenOffice.UserSettings}/user/config/OpenCards.tree. (${OpenOffice.UserSettings} is for WindowsXP "C:\Documents and Setting\UserName\ApplicationData\OpenOffice.org2", for Linux "${userhome}/.openoffice.org2" and for Windows Vista "C:\Users\UserName\ApplicationData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org2" ). To transfer the category tree just copy the file to the appropriate location on your new computer.

If the location of the files has changed you can try to edit the file manually because it is plain xml.

The toolbar-button and pull-down menu of Opencards stay gray. Why?

OpenCards requires Java to be installed on your machine. You can find out which java-version is used by OpenOffice under Tools->Options->Java. If you can not find a java with version higher or equal to 1.5, you need to upgrade your local java installation. To do so just download and install the latest release of java. Finally your OpenOffice java configuration should look similar to this one:

OpenOffice crashes when I try to start OpenCards under OpenSuse 10.3. Why ?