I've added some plugins for Excel and Powerpoint files which will
be in the next release of greenstone. However, for those who
can't wait (and don't mind being guinea pigs), I've made them
available for download for windows and x86 linux from:

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~jrm21/gsdl/tmp/

just unpack into your gsdl home directory.

Notes:
1) I haven't tested the linux tar.gz on other machines but the binaries
should work on any glibc 2 machine.

2) I think these will only work with gsdl 2.37, and not gsdl 2.36 or
earlier. Also, my zip/tar files don't include the little icons for these
formats.

3) The plugins are called "PPTPlug" and "ExcelPlug", so add these to
your collect.cfg file.

4) These are both from the same GPL'd package, xlhtml. THIS CAN ONLY
READ OFFICE 95 AND 97 FORMATS!!!! This is because Microsoft deliberately
change their file formats so that everyone has to upgrade their
software.
If you can't extract any text, it is probably because you are using
Office 2000 (or really old) versions of Excel or PowerPoint.

Let me know of any problems with the plugins.

Thanks
John McPherson