Disclaimer: This article is just for educational purpose. I cannot be held responsible if you are violating the terms and conditions of SlideShare.We recently saw an article on how to download files from Scribd for free without an account which got a great response. In this article we shall see how to download presentations from SlideShare when download option is disabled by the author. Similar to Scribd, SlideShare is yet another great resource to find contents related to all fields. People from worldwide share their presentations covering wide range of topics. All users are allowed to view documents online without the need of any account. But to download files you need an account or should login via your Facebook account. Many of us would prefer downloading the files offline for instant and easy access without the need of internet. It also lets us carry them in our portable devices to read contents on the go.But sometimes the problem is the content owner might prefer to disable the download option. In such case you will see that the download button is disabled and greyed out. So how will you download in such a scenario? If you are urgently in need of the document this could certainly frustrate you. The only option left is to personally request the author to send you the presentation.Now let’s see an alternative solution to this. The procedure might look lengthy but it’s pretty simple.
How To Download Presentations from SlideShare when Author has Disabled it:

1. Go to the concerned document you want to download.2. Right click on blank space around the presentation and select View page source.3. Press CTRL + f and search for og:image4. Copy the URL assigned to content till the phpapp01/phpapp02 part.

5. Append .xml to the URL you copied and remove the ss_thumbnails part from the URL. Then paste it into the address bar and hit enter. Refer the below example.[Update- August 06, 2012]
E.g:
Original: http://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thum...2.jpgModified: http://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/test-eb...xmlOROriginal: http://m.slidesharecdn.com/convert.p...1.jpgModified: http://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/test-ebook-phpapp02.xmlYou might also like how to download PPT from authorSTREAM for free
6. Now you will be able to see all URL’s of all slides that make up this presentation. Make a note of it.


Bonus Tip: You can automate the whole process below via macro.
7. Open Microsoft Office PowerPoint and create a new blank presentation. I used PowerPoint 2007.8. Click on the Microsoft Office Logo button on top left and click PowerPoint Options. Now check the option Show Developer tab in the Ribbon.


9. Select Developer tab and click on the hammer/wrench icon. In older version of PowerPoint right click on menu bar and select Control Toolbox and then select on the hammer icon.
10
. Now select Shockwave Flash Object from the pop up window.

11. Draw a big rectangle with your mouse cursor. Then right click on it and select properties. In the movie field paste the URL of the SWF file you noted down before.E.g: http://s3.amazonaws.com/slideshare/t...02-slide-1.swf


12. Insert a new slide, follow the same procedure and insert all slideshare swf one by one onto each slide. Once done save the presentation on to your disk.Tip: Content may not appear initially only cross might appear, press F5(Slideshow) to view them.13. Now to convert the SlideShare presentation into a portable PDF eBook do the following.

14. Click Save As and select PDF or XPS. Give a name to it and save as PDF. If you don’t find publish to PDF option, install Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in. Once done, close and open your presentation to get save to PDF option
.

Automate Shockwave File Insertion in Presentation via Macro:

1. Download Auto Insert SlideShare Slide presentation file.2. Open the presentation. If you are shown security warning, click on options-> Enable this content.3. Press ALT + F8 and click Run.4. Now you will be shown the below window.– In prefix enter URL which you noted down in step 6 up to “slide-” Eg: http://slideshare.s3.amazonaws.com/t...papp02-slide-– In from and to enter slide numbers. All slides within the range will be inserted.– In suffix, enter .swf

5. Then click Insert and wait for a while for all slides to be inserted. Once done, press F5 and make sure you view all slides. Now carry on from step 13 to save the file as PDF. It’s always recommended to save the file as PDF instead of having them as PPT.Thanks Valerio Oliveira for the macro!If you need an alternative to download SlideShare presentations without using Microsoft PowerPoint what you can do isdownload all SWF files using download manager like IDM then print all SWF’s into PDF using PDF creators like PrimoPDF preferably use Internet Explorer to open and print flash file. Then finally merge all PDF into a single eBookusing PDF merge tool like PDFill.
So, were you able to follow the steps? Stuck up in any step? Feel free to drop in your queries.Know any other easier method? Do let us know. If you liked the article do share it across!