How to open alias files with applescript in Powerpoint?

Question

I would like to do something like this:
set F to choose folder
tell application "Finder" to set P to (files of entire contents of F whose name extension is "ppt")
repeat with oneFile in P
          tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"
  activate
                    open (oneFile as alias)
          end tell
end  tell
It works fine if all files are regular files.
But I want/need it to work also, if some of the files are aliases (icon has the little pointer in Finder).
Could some kind soul explain to me what I would have to do?
TIA.
Gabriel.

Answer 1

Are you saying this doesn't work? Generally applications don't/shouldn't care about whether you pass them an actual file or an alias.
In either case, it's not hard to dereference the alias back to the original file:
set F to choose folder
tell application "Finder" to set P to (files of entire contents of F whose name extension is "ppt")
repeat with oneFile in P
          if class of oneFile is alias file then
                    tell application "Finder" to set oneFile to (original item of oneFile)
          end if
  open oneFile
end repeat
Note that I've just specified 'open oneFile' rather than targetting PowerPoint directly - there's no need to target PowerPoint if it's the default application for .ppt files. However, there's no problem telling PowerPoint to open the file if you prefer.