Regardless of the version of Office installed on your PC, by following the instructions I’m about to give you, you’ll be able to convert PowerPoint to video and distribute your presentations online very easily and quickly. All you have to do is take five minutes of your free time and follow the steps below. You’ll be surprised at how simple it is.
Excuse me? You don’t have Office installed on your PC? No problem at all! There are various PowerPoint alternatives that allow you to turn PPT/PPTX files into videos on both Windows and Mac. Just think, if you don’t want to install new programs on your computer, you can also turn to online solutions that allow you to convert PowerPoint presentations directly from your browser… you are really spoilt for choice! But let’s not get too long in the preamble and get down to business. Let’s roll up our sleeves and find out how to get videos from our PowerPoint presentations.
Programs to convert PowerPoint to video
The easiest way to convert a PowerPoint file to a movie is to use Microsoft’s program of the same name; however, if you don’t feel like buying a license, you can count on various alternatives. Everything is explained below.
Microsoft PowerPoint (Windows/MacOS)
Starting with the 2010 version of Microsoft Office, PowerPoint allows you to make a movie from a presentation, in no time and preserving animations, audio and content, both on Windows and macOS. If you don’t have an Office license, you’ll be pleased to know that you can try all the programs included in Microsoft 365 for free for a period of 30 days: to learn more about this possibility, I refer you to my guide on how to download Office for free.
In any case, once the program is installed (and activated), click on the File tab at the top of the screen and select Open from the screen that appears (on Windows) or go to File > Open (on macOS) and use the options visible on the screen to select the .PPTX or .PPT file to be opened; alternatively, go to the folder that contains the file, right-click on it and select Open with > Microsoft PowerPoint from the menu that appears.
Once the presentation is loaded into the program, follow the procedure best suited to your operating system: if you are using Windows, click the File tab again, select Export from the sidebar on the next screen and click the Create Video button.
Now, choose the quality of the presentation using the drop-down menu, indicate whether or not to include audio intervals and comments using the menu provided and choose the duration in seconds of each slide using the box at the bottom of the screen. Once you’ve made the necessary adjustments, click the Create Video button and select the folder where you want to save your movie. Finally, press the Save button to create the video immediately.
If, instead, you have a Mac, you have to open the File > Export… menu of PowerPoint, located at the top; then give a name to the movie by typing it in the text field Export as:, choose the folder where you want to save the file using the Located in drop-down menu and then set the File Format menu to the MP4 option, if you want to save the movie in MP4 format, or MOV, if you want to save it in MOV format.
After that, select the quality of the presentation using the drop-down menu (or choose the width and height by typing them manually in the boxes below), specify whether to include the recorded audio intervals and comments by checking the appropriate box and define the seconds to spend on each slide if no specific time interval is set. When you’re done, click the Export button and you’re done.
Apple Keynote (macOS)
Keynote for macOS, the official presentation software developed and distributed by Apple, also allows you to convert a PowerPoint file (but also a presentation in native format) while leaving intact the animations and audio contained in the file.
If you have not yet downloaded Keynote on your Mac, you can do it for free, by downloading the program directly from the Mac App Store: so connect to the link I provided earlier, press the button to open the Mac App Store (if necessary) and, when it starts, click on the Get/Install button, to start downloading and installing the program. You may have to enter your Apple ID password or verify your identity with Touch ID.
Anyway, after opening the Keynote application, go to File > Open… and select the PowerPoint presentation you want to convert to video; then go to File > Export As… > Movie and make sure that the Movie tab is selected on the screen that appears next, otherwise do it yourself.
Now, indicate whether to include all slides or only a set of slides in the video, choose after how many seconds to switch to the next slide and/or animation when no automatic timer is set (i.e. at the “click” events of the presentation) and choose the resolution to use for the movie, using the drop-down menu.
Once you’ve made the necessary adjustments, click the Next… button, specify the name and save location of your movie and click the Export button to finish creating it.
Photo and iMovie (Windows/MacOS)
If you can’t convert a PowerPoint presentation into a video by applying the strategies I’ve suggested so far, you can use a little trick that involves using the free PowerPoint Online service, in conjunction with Windows’ Photos and macOS’ iMovie applications.
Let me explain: PowerPoint Online does not allow you to convert a presentation into a movie directly, but it does allow you to export all your slides at once as JPG images. Then, using the Photo and iMovie applications, you can make a movie, complete with animations and music, from the downloaded sequence of images.
I must point out, however, that following this approach, the animations, transitions, on-click events of the various slides and the audio of the presentation will not be preserved: the contents of each slide will be saved all together in the JPG image related to it; however, it remains possible to insert transitions between slides and to combine a music track to the movie using the features included in the Windows and macOS applications. I know, the result is not quite the same as direct export, but in the absence of other operating methods this is still the best approach.
Anyway, to export the slides of your presentation as JPG images, go to the PowerPoint online website and log in with your Microsoft account, entering the credentials in the appropriate fields; if you don’t have one, you can create one now by clicking on the link click here to create one and following the instructions I provided in this guide.
Once you have logged in, click on the Upload and open… option on the right-hand side of the PowerPoint online home screen and use the panel to import the presentation into the site; once this is done, a copy of the presentation will be stored in the OneDrive account linked to the Microsoft profile.
When the upload is complete, you should see the content of the presentation directly in the browser window; when that happens, click on the PowerPoint Online File menu, choose Save As from the menu that appears on the screen and click on the Download as Images and Download buttons to get a .zipper archive containing all the slides of the presentation.
At this point, extract the archive obtained in a folder of your choice: as you can see, the name of the files containing the slides also identifies their location (Slide1 for the first slide, Slide2 for the second and so on), which greatly simplifies the process of creating the video using the Windows Photos and macOS iMovie applications, which we’ll see in a moment.
Windows Photos
Once you have extracted the images, open the Windows Photo application from the Start menu (the flag icon on the left side of the taskbar), click the New Video/New Video button in the upper right corner (the movie symbol) and select the New Video Project item from the menu that appears. If you don’t see it, first click the […] button, also located in the upper right corner.
Now, give a name to the movie by typing it in the appropriate field, click the OK button and drag the folder containing the slides directly into the Catalog pane of the Photo project; if you can’t do that, click the Add button located inside the latter, select the From my PC item from the menu that appears afterwards and select the folder containing the slides, using the proposed panel.
Now, drag each of the slides onto the Photo timeline located at the bottom, following the order in which you want the slides to appear and use the menus and buttons visible on the screen to set the duration of each slide, to add text, filters or animations and to insert background music.
When you’re done, click the Finish Video button at the top right, choose the quality you want to apply to the video using the drop-down menu and press the Export button to save the video in MP4 format in the folder of your choice. For more information, take a look at my guide in which I explained how to do video editing, in which you can find a detailed explanation of how Photo works.
macOS iMovie
First, open the macOS iMovie app by invoking it from the operating system’s Launchpad (if you don’t have it, you can download it for free from the Mac App Store by clicking here). If necessary, grant permissions to access the photos on your computer, responding affirmatively to the warning that appears on the screen.
When you arrive at the iMovie home screen, click on the Projects tab and then on the Create New and Movie buttons to start creating a new video; now, click on the My Movie item on the left sidebar, then on the down arrow attached to the Import Media box and select the folder containing the previously obtained images. To add the images to the project, click the Import All button in the lower right corner.
Now, drag each of the slides onto the iMovie timeline (the one located at the bottom), respecting the order in which the slides should appear; if necessary, use the tabs visible at the top to add audio, titles, backgrounds or transitions between images.
Once you’ve finished your work, click on iMovie’s Share button (the square with the upward arrow at the top right), click on the Export File button located in the panel that appears on the screen and, if you feel it’s appropriate, use the resolution, quality and compression drop-down menus to customize the default parameters.
Finally, click on the Next… button, specify the name and the folder for saving the file and press the Export button to create the movie. For more information on how iMovie works, I invite you to take a look at the tutorial I dedicated to the program.
How to convert PowerPoint to video online
Would you like to convert PowerPoint to video without installing programs on your PC? In this case you can rely on Online-Convert, an online service that allows you to convert many different types of files to each other.
Online-Convert does not require registration to be used and allows you to upload files with a maximum weight of 100 MB. Uploaded data is automatically deleted within 24 hours; however, since it is an online service, I do not recommend using it for converting files containing sensitive information.
Having said that, let’s get to work. To convert a PPT or PPTX file into a video with Online-Convert, go to the service’s homepage and select the video format you wish to convert (e.g. AVI) from the drop-down menu located in the Video converter box. Then drag the presentation directly to the Drop Files Here panel of Online-convert or click the Choose files button and select the file to be transformed using the appropriate panel.
Once the video is loaded, press the Start conversion button to start converting it and then downloading it to your PC. If you want, you can also change the resolution, bitrate and other parameters of the output video by filling out the form fields under Video settings (optional). The conversion may take a few minutes; once it is finished, the file will be downloaded to your computer, fully automatically.