How to Convert a Word Document to a PowerPoint Presentation

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA. Nicole Levine is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. She has more than 20 years of experience creating technical documentation and leading support teams at major web hosting and software companies. Nicole also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State University and teaches composition, fiction-writing, and zine-making at various institutions.

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This wikiHow article will show you the best way to convert a Microsoft Word document into a PowerPoint presentation on your PC or Mac. By making a few quick formatting changes to your document, you can import the document into PowerPoint and automatically create pre-formatted slides without having to retype anything!

In Word, highlight and change your title text to “Heading 1” and the information under each title to “Heading 2.” Save your document. In PowerPoint, open a blank presentation and click New Slide > Slides from Outline. Select your Word document and click “Insert.”

Formatting the Document Before Converting

• Each section needs a title at the top, and the title should be on its own line. The title will then become the title of that section's PowerPoint slide.
• For example, let's say the first page of your Word document contains sales information that you'd like to appear on a PowerPoint slide called "Sales." At the top of that section, you'd type "Sales" as the title, since you want that to be the name of your slide. Below that would be the content of the slide.
• Press Enter or Return after each section so there's at least one empty line between the end of a section and the title of the next slide.

• If you don't see style examples on the toolbar, click the Styles menu to view them.

Highlight the title of your first slide/section. Just click and drag your mouse across the entire title to select it.

• Once you change the first title to "Header 1," go through the rest of your document and do the same with other slide titles. You'll want all of the titles to be set to this style so they'll convert properly.

• Make sure you have at least one blank line between the title and the rest of the page's content.

• In the content area, press the Enter or Return key to add space between every block of text you want separated on the slide. Every individual line or paragraph will be a different bullet on your final slide.

• Text formatted with "Heading 2"
  • Text formatted with "Heading 3"

  

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  Separate each slide with a blank line. Press Enter or Return before each new title. This creates the outline for PowerPoint. Each large, bolded line indicates a title and the smaller text underneath is the content of that slide. If there is a space, then another title, PowerPoint will separate this into a new slide.

  

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  • If you delete the spaces between lines or try to add new text, it may not be formatted correctly, so always do this step last.

  

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  • Close Word when you're finished so there are no conflicts with PowerPoint in the remaining steps.
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  Converting to PowerPoint

  

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  Open PowerPoint. It'll be in your Windows Start menu on Windows, or in the Applications folder on macOS. [5] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

  

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  \n"> Click Blank Presentation . It's the white square near the top of the window.

  

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  Click the menu icon next to "New Slide." It's the downward-pointing arrow next to "New Slide" in the toolbar. A menu will expand. [6] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

  

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  \n"> Select Slides from outline… . Now you'll see your file browser.

  

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  • Every title you set to "Header 1" appears on its own slide, along with its corresponding content, which you set to "Header 2."
  • You can now design the slides however you'd like using all of your favorite PowerPoint tools.
  • Word will not automatically convert images for you—you will have to manually add the images into your presentation.

  

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  Save the file as a PowerPoint presentation. To save your presentation, click File, select Save as, choose a saving location, and then save the file with the .PPTX extension.

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