Document versatility is the goal of every professional especially when it comes to presentations. The key element that most people do not understand regarding versatility of files (in this case portability) is a conversion from one platform to another. For instance, PowerPoint per se resides either on Windows or Mac platforms while Google Slides resides on a web-based platform. This means that porting a PowerPoint template file to a Google Slides file requires some process of conversion to maintain its style and format. Luckily, there are three methods you can use to convert your PowerPoint presentations to Google Slides:
Open-With Google Drive
This is the simplest method of all. It involves importing the PowerPoint presentation into the Google Slides application.
Steps:
1. Go to Google Drive and sign in
2. On the left sidebar, locate the menu items and select “My Drive.”
3. Identify the directory/folder that your presentation will be imported to, e.g. (My Drive > Your_Folder_Name)
4. Drag and drop the presentation file into the selected folder (While dragging the file, make sure you drop it on the suggested area labeled “Drop files here”)
5. Once you drop the PowerPoint file, Google will automatically upload the file to its drive (You should confirm that the upload was successful by checking the upload status notification )
6. At this point, the PowerPoint presentation file is yet to be converted to the desired Google Slides format. Therefore, you need to make the conversion at this step. Just double-click the uploaded presentation, and you should notice a drop-down menu with the label “Open with Google Slides.”
7. Click on the drop-down menu and select “Google Slides” (usually the first item on the menu).
8. If the conversion was successful, your slides should be editable directly as Google Slides.
If you use this method, you might notice that the Google Drive directory that you uploaded your presentation contains two files with similar names and extensions (.pptx) but different icons with the original file maintaining its P-like icon. Note that the original presentation file is read-only while the converted one is both read/write (editable).
Blank Google Slides
This method is almost similar to the above as it starts from the Google Drive too. Here, you will create a blank Google Slides presentation to initiate the conversion process. The following is the procedure.
Steps:
1. Go to Google Drive and sign in
2. Under the “Google Drive” logo on the top-left corner of the window, locate a blue button with a label “New” (easily visible)
3. Click on the “New” button and scroll down to “Google Slides” and select it
4. A new window should open with a blank presentation
5. On the menu bar at the top of the window, locate the first menu item with the label “File,” then select “Open” option
6. A dialog box should pop up with options indicating various sources that can be supported by Google Drive.
7. Choose the location of your PowerPoint presentation file say from your computer (File > Open > Upload)
8. Upload your PowerPoint presentation. You can do this by either selecting the file manually by clicking the “Select a file from your computer” button or using drag and drop method.
9. The process of uploading the PowerPoint file converts it directly to Google Slides
10. You can start editing your presentation after completing all the above steps
Note that this method has an advantage over the first method regarding file redundancy as it eliminates duplicate files every time a conversion is done!
Partial Conversion
The above methods only apply to a specific scenario where new presentations are created. However, some situations involve importing part of a PowerPoint presentation to either a new or an existing Google Slides presentation. This is described below.
Steps
1. Go to Google Drive and sign in
2. If you are creating a new Google Slides presentation, follow the steps 1 – 3 of the previous method (Blank Google Slides Method), otherwise, open the existing presentation
3. Once the presentation is open, select “File” and scroll down to “Import slides” on the (i.e., File > Import slides) and select this option
4. A file dialog should popup whereby you can choose the slides from the imported or the uploaded presentations (if you don’t have any). You can then select either all or individual slides
5. All the imported slides will be appended to the end of existing slides.
6. The conversion process is complete at this stage, and you should be able to edit them as Google Slides
In conclusion, the choice of the conversion method depends on how easy you can navigate through the conversion process. But the bottom-line is, all the above methods give the same results.
