If you use a Chromebook, you will no doubt at some point need to open and possibly even edit a PowerPoint presentation on it.
And while there are a few different ways that you can use Microsoft Office on a Chromebook. Today, we’re going to be talking about the easiest, most built in way to open and use a PowerPoint presentation on a Chromebook. (The way Google intends for you to do it).
Prefer to watch a video about how to open a Powerpoint presentation on a Chromebook? Click here.
How To Open A PowerPoint Presentation The Built In Way
You might not know it, but some basic Powerpoint capabilities are actually built into Chrome OS. And for basic tasks like viewing or presenting a presentation, or tweaking some text or adding an image. This built in method will be perfect.
All you have to do is double click on the PowerPoint file in the files app just like you would to open any other file.
And your presentation will open up in Google Chrome! It’s as simple as that!
The first time you do this, you’ll get a popup on the screen explaining how it works. But you can just click “Got it” to close that.
And now, your presentation will be open and ready to use.
So now from here, you can view the presentation, present it, and even make some basic changes like deleting or moving things, adding or changing text, adding images, and other simple things like that.
And any changes you make to the presentation will be automatically saved to the original file on your Chromebook’s hard drive. Just like you would expect if you we’re using Microsoft PowerPoint with autosave turned on.
So if you make some changes to a presentation, and then (for example), email that file to someone else, the person you send it to will get the presentation with all the changes you’ve made.
But, as you may have noticed, the interface you get when you open a PowerPoint presentation this way is pretty basic.
It can do all the basic things and it’s a really quick and easy solution, but if you want all the advanced features like you might find in Microsoft PowerPoint, you’ll want to do a few more steps to open the presentation in Google Slides.
How To Open A PowerPoint Presentation In Google Slides
To open a Powerpoint presentation in Google Slides on your Chromebook, you’ll first need to follow the steps above to open the presentation in the built in PowerPoint viewer. And then, once you’ve done that, all you need to do is click “File”…
And in the menu that appears, click “Save as Google Slides”.
Now, a popup will appear on the screen that says “Saving as Google Slides”, and it will take a few seconds (or possibly longer) for your PowerPoint presentation to be converted into a Google Slides presentation.
But, once it’s converted, your presentation will automatically open up in Google Slides in a new tab. And you’ll see a message that says “Hooray! Your file is now in Google Slides format”.
And that’s all there is to it! Your Powerpoint presentation is now in Google Slides. So now you can edit it with all the advanced features you get in Google Slides, and then present the presentation or even share it with other people via Google Slides so that they can access it on their computer.
Re-downloading The Presentation (Optional)
But, one thing to keep in mind with Google Slides is that any changes you make in Google Slides will not be saved to the original file. When you open the PowerPoint file in Google Slides, it essentially copies the file to Google Slides.
So any changes you make to the original file after opening it in Google Slides will not be saved to the Google Slides version. And any changes you make to the Google Slides version will not be saved to the original file.
If you’re happy for the presentation to remain in Google Slides, that’s fine. Your changes will all be automatically saved in Google Slides, and the updated presentation will always be there for you on Google Drive.
But, if you wanted to make some changes in Google Slides, and have all those changes saved in a PowerPoint file on your Chromebook, there is a pretty easy way to do that.
Once you’ve finished making changes to the presentation in Google Slides, all you need to do is click on “File”…
Then, in the menu that appears, hover your mouse over “Download”…
And then, in the smaller menu that appears next to that, click “Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx).
Now, the modified presentation will download to your Chromebook as a PowerPoint presentation. So now, in the Files app, you should have the original PowerPoint presentation and the new PowerPoint presentation both with the same name.
If the original file was located somewhere other than your downloads folder, it will still be in that location, and the new version will be in the downloads folder with the same name as the original.
But, if the original file was in the downloads folder, you will now have the original and the new presentation both there with the same name, but the new presentation will have a (1) at the end of its name.
So now you might want to delete the original presentation, rename the new one, or move one of them to a different folder, but then you’ll have your modified presentation saved to your Chromebook as a PowerPoint file.
And that’s all there is to it! Whether you chose the quicker easier way, or the slightly more difficult way that gives you more features, you now know how to open a PowerPoint Presentation on a Chromebook.
