Zamzar - Free Online File Conversion

Zamzar is a free online file conversion tool. (Subscriptions are available starting at $7/month to upload larger files, faster conversion, no ads on web page, etc.) It offers quite a range of file type conversions. It will probably be most helpful if you receive one of the new ___X Office2007 files and don't have Office 2007 on your system. It will down convert to the Office 2003 format. Another instance is if you have an OpenOffice document and want to open it in a Microsoft program. One other usage I envision is converting Microsoft Works documents. Finally, it is able to convert some docs to SWF flash formats.

The online site does have popups (which can be blocked) with the free subscription, and you do NOT have to register or login to use the service. You do have to supply an email address which is used to notify you when the file conversion is completed. Otherwise it is a pretty simple step of uploading a doc, choosing the desired outcome format, and submitting.

It took 1-10 minutes to receive notification that the file was ready for viewing or download. There are no ads on the converted file.

The only problem I had is that it frequently returned an "error converting file" message to me. Service is still in beta... In any case, it may be helpful at some point.

Here's an example of converting a PPTX (PowerPoint 2007) file to SWF (Flash).