Here’s a quick tip that I was reminded of after a question on Twitter today.

Let’s say you have a Smart Notebook file or Promethean flipchart which has lots of images in it, and maybe even some embedded flash files. How do you get those resources out to use elsewhere?

Well, if you select the file in your regular file management window you should be able to rename it. Change the bit after the dot of the filename that says .xbk, .nbk, .notebook or .flp and change it to a .zip instead. If you can’t see the extension on the end of the filename you may need to change your folder properties since Windows can hide these by default.

Once you have changed the extension to .zip, your computer now thinks it is a zip file. So now open it up inside WinZip or whatever software you use to open zip files with.

You will see a listing of all the assets inside the flipchart/notebook file listed as if this was just another zip file. You may even see an Images folder with all the picture files inside. All you need to do now is select out the images/flash files you want and copy/paste them to another folder.

And that’s it. You might want to make a copy of the notebook file before you do this in case you wreck it 😉 But it’s pretty straightforward.