Convert Word to Powerpoint
PowerPoint is a great way to merge text and images for presentations, allowing you to control the flow of information while adding highlights, pictures, and graphs. With a few formatting changes, you can actually save yourself the hassle of retyping everything and convert your Word documents right to PowerPoint.
Contents
Steps
Converting Word Documents
- Open your document using Microsoft Word. Start Word and open the document by clicking "File" → "Open." Any document can be converted into a PowerPoint. Know that you will need to copy and paste in pictures by hand.
- Separate each "slide" with titles. In order for PowerPoint to know where to divide up slides, you need to divide up the information. In the line above each list, paragraph, or sentence you want as a separate slide, write a title for the slide, such as "First Quarter Numbers" or "Works Cited."
- This will become the large, bolded text at the top of each PowerPoint slide.
- Navigate to the "Styles" menu. Click on the "Home" tab in the upper left corner of Word. Along your toolbar at the top of the screen you should see a large box labeled "Styles." In it are several formatting examples labeled "Normal," "No Spacing," "Heading 1," etc.
- Highlight your titles and click "Heading 1." You will have to format each title individually. The text will become large, bolded, and colored blue -- and PowerPoint will use this format to determine the slide titles.
- Format the slide content as "Heading 2." Hit the "enter" key to put a space between every block of text that you want separated. Now, highlight the text and select "Heading 2" on the "Styles" menu. Your text will turn blue. Every individual line or paragraph will be a different bullet on your final slide.
- Bulleted sections will remain in the same slide if they are formatted as "Heading 2."
- Add sub-bullets using "Heading 3." If you assign something to "Heading 3," it will appear indented to the right and on a separate line. The PowerPoint slide would appear like the following:
- Text formatted with "Heading 2"
- Text formatted with "Heading 3"
- Text formatted with "Heading 2"
- Separate each slide with a space. Hit "Enter" before each new title. This creates the outline for PowerPoint. Each large, bolded line indicates a title and the small blue text underneath is the content of your slide. If there is a space, then another title, PowerPoint will separate this into a new slide.
- Customize your text if you'd like. Once you've set up the outline you can change the size, color, and font of your text, which will convert to PowerPoint. The text no longer needs to be blue or bolded -- it has already been coded for conversion to PowerPoint
- If you delete the spaces between lines or try to add new text, it may not be formatted correctly, so always take this step last.
- Don't forget to save your document!
- Send the document to PowerPoint using "File → "Send to PowerPoint." PowerPoint will take your document and convert it automatically into slides. If you cannot see the "Send to PowerPoint" button:
- Click on "File" → "Options" to open up the Options Window.
- Click "Quick Access Toolbar."
- Select "All Commands" under the "Choose Commands From:" menu.
- Scroll down through the alphabetically listed commands until you find "Send to Microsoft Powerpoint." Click to "Add > >" it.
- Click OK in the bottom right corner. Now, a small button will appear in the upper left corner of word that lets you send the document to PowerPoint.
- Customize your presentation in PowerPoint. Apply the finishing touches to your presentation, like slide animations, sounds, themes, or pictures.
- Word will not automatically convert pictures for you -- you will have to manually copy and paste or insert them into your slides.
Writing a New PowerPoint in Word
- Use the "Outlines" view to format a new Word document for PowerPoint. When writing in outlines, Word automatically formats slide titles and text, allowing you to write and edit a PowerPoint in one document before converting it to slides.
- You will still need to add you pictures manually in PowerPoint.
- Begin a "New Document" in Word. Click "File" → "New" to start a blank document. You could also press "Ctrl" and "N" simultaneously.
- Click on "View" → "Outline." The "View" tab is at the top of you screen. Once you click on it, a tab labeled "Document Views" will appear above your blank document. Click on the one labeled "Outline." This will bring up the Outline editing view.
- This view should look like a giant, blank white screen with your tabs above it.
- Type the title of your first slide and hit "Enter." You text will be in large font and colored dark blue -- this indicates the title of each slide.
- Hit "tab" to write your slide text. This will indent the line to the right. Everything written here will be the text for your slide. Every time you hit enter, it will bring you to a new line -- this corresponds to bullet points in your PowerPoint.
- If you hit tab again, you will create "sub-bullets, like this:
- This is a sub-bullet.
- If you hit tab again, you will create "sub-bullets, like this:
- Start a new slide by choosing "Level 1" in the upper left corner. Once you've written all of your slide text, hit enter to start a new line. In the upper left corner, under the title "Outline Tools," you'll see a menu with the current "Level." Using either the green arrows or the dropdown menu, select "Level 1" to make a new title.
- You can also click and drag the small gray circles next to you text. If you drag a circle all the way to the left it will become a title.
- Set the "Levels" to format your slides. You can click on a line and change it's "Level" at any time. The levels convert to PowerPoint as follows:
- Level 1 = Slide Titles
- Level 2 = Slide Text
- Level 3 and up = Sub-Bullets
- Body Text will not appear in your PowerPoint.
- Send the document to PowerPoint using "File → "Send to PowerPoint." PowerPoint will take your document and convert it automatically into slides. If you cannot see the "Send to PowerPoint" button, try this to make it appear.
- Click on "File" → "Options" to open up the Options Window.
- Click "Quick Access Toolbar."
- Select "All Commands" under the "Choose Commands From:" menu.
- Scroll down through the alphabetically listed commands until you find "Send to Microsoft Powerpoint." Click to "Add > >" it.
- Click OK in the bottom right corner. Now, a small button will appear in the upper left corner of word that lets you send the document to PowerPoint.
- Alternatively, open your document right in PowerPoint. PowerPoint will automatically convert documents written in Outline form for you. In PowerPoint, click "File" → "Open." Select "All Files" from the dropdown menu labeled VIEW FILES? to make Word Documents appear. Find and open you document to have it automatically converted.
- Customize your presentation in PowerPoint. Apply the finishing touches to your presentation, like slide animations, sounds, themes, or pictures.
- Word will not automatically convert pictures for you -- you will have to manually copy and paste or insert them into your slides.
Troubleshooting
- Separating slides without titles. To make a new slide without a title, simple hit "enter" to create a new line above your side text. Hit the space bar once, then highlight that space with your mouse. Format the space as "Heading One" in the Styles toolbar. This helps if you want to make continuing slides, don't want titles, or want to make blank slides for pictures.
- In the Outlines view, simply leave the lines labeled "Level 1" blank and hit "enter"
- Checking your work before converting. Click on the "View" tab at the top of Word and choose "Outline View" from the upper left corner. This does not actually change your document at all, but it shows it to you in order. Each "Level," which you can change with the green arrows at the top of the screen, corresponds to a different part of you PowerPoint:
- Level 1 = Slide Titles
- Level 2 = Slide Text
- Level 3 and up = Sub-Bullets
- Body Text will not appear in your PowerPoint.
- Adding slides from Word to an existing PowerPoint. If you simply want to add in a few slides from a Word document, you can have PowerPoint create new slides based on Word. To do so, navigate to the point you want to insert the slides. Click on the small downward ARROW button underneath "Create New Slide" and choose "Create slide from outline."
- To put the slides in the right place, click on the slide you want to come before your Word document before "Create New Slides."
- Powerpoint will automatically create every slide from your document in order, not just the first one.
- Linking Word documents into PowerPoint. Microsoft allows you to open Word documents right from a PowerPoint if you do not want to convert the entire thing into a presentation. This allows you to reference your Word document without actually making a bunch of new slides. When you play your slideshow, you can click on the link to open your document. When you close it, PowerPoint will automatically resume where you left off.
- Right click on the text or image your want to link.
- Choose the option "Hyperlink..."
- Select the file you want to open from the menu and hit "okay."
- Now you can click on your image or text during the slideshow to bring up your Word document.
- Add pictures by copying and pasting them from Word. Unfortunately, PowerPoint cannot convert your pictures from Word. To put them back in, simply right click on the picture in Word and choose "Copy." Then, navigate to the slide where you want your picture in PowerPoint, right click, and select "Paste." You will be able to move it, resize it, or crop it in PowerPoint.
- You can also use the "Insert" button on PowerPoint to search your computer for pictures and add them.
- Downloading the latest version of Microsoft Office. If you cannot convert your documents, despite correctly formatting and opening everything, you likely have an older version of Microsoft Office. If this is the case, download the newest version online at Microsoft's website.
- You can also sign up for a [free 1-month trial period] if you only need to convert a few documents.
Tips
- Mix and match! You may need to use different methods of converting depending on your time, document size and other factors.
Warnings
- Give your Powerpoint a test run after converting. If you are not satisfied with the complete Powerpoint presentation after you convert it, a few manual touches will be needed.
