Having searched vainly for how to put a collection of photos into a LibreOffice Impress file using a batch process, I thought I would document it here.  It’s quite simple really.

1. The first thing is to get all the files at a reasonable size, otherwise the resultant odp file will be huge and will take ages to process and to file etc.  If you are projecting the files, the projector will probably have reduced resolution anyway, so having the files at greater resolution is just wasting space and processing.

So, go to the relevant directory, and select all the relevant files.

• Right click and select “Convert to file format…”
• Select “Convert all files at once” and OK
• Put in the desired width (in my case 1280)
• Under “New File”, select the folder where you want the reduced files to end up
• Under extension, select .JPG
• OK

The reduced files should all be in the specified directory.

2. The second thing is to pull all these files into Impress

• Open Impress and create a new presentation
• Select Insert/ Image/ Photo Album (New window opens)
• Select Add (file selection window opens)
• Go to the relevant output directory from Step 1
• Select all the required files
• Open (window closes)
• The files should now appear in the Create Photo Album scroll area.  Select Insert Slides
• Wait awhile, and Voila!