If you are planning to create a PowerPoint presentation where you will be making heavy use of textual information, it may be much easier to create the content in Microsoft Word. You may be wondering how you can convert your Word document into a PowerPoint presentation without having to copy and paste it into individual slides: by making some changes to the text formatting, you can solve the problem by avoiding having to rewrite everything within the presentation.
Steps
Method 1 of 2: Format the Word Document
Step 1. Open the document in Microsoft Word
Double-click the icon of the Word file you need to edit. Before converting your Word document into a PowerPoint presentation you will need to make some formatting changes of the text, so that it can be turned into PowerPoint slides correctly.
Step 2. Separate the text of the Word document into sections, each of which must have a title
In order for PowerPoint to correctly import the text present in the Word document, you will first need to fragment it into multiple sections which will then become the individual slides of the presentation. Each paragraph of text must be accompanied by a title that must occupy a separate line from the rest of the section. The title of the individual paragraphs will become the title of the corresponding PowerPoint slide.
- For example, assume that the first page of the Word document contains sales information to be displayed within a PowerPoint slide whose title must be "Sales Data". In this case, the title "Sales Data" must be entered at the beginning of the section of the Word document, as this must also be the title of the corresponding PowerPoint slide. Below, you will find the contents of the slide.
- Press the button Enter of the keyboard at the end of each section of the text corresponding to each slide, so that there is at least one blank line between the end of each paragraph and the heading of the next one.
Step 3. Enter the "Styles" menu
Click on the tab Home on the Word ribbon. The "Styles" group is one of the panels within the toolbar displayed at the top of the program window. Within this group, various text formatting styles are listed, for example "Normal", "No spacing", "Heading 1", "Heading 2" and so on.
Step 4. Select the title of the first paragraph / section of the text
You simply need to drag the text cursor along the entire length of the title, so that it appears highlighted in blue.
Step 5. Now click on the Heading 1 style
The selected text will be formatted to be larger than the rest of the text, it will be bold and colored blue. PowerPoint is configured to create a new slide whenever the "Heading 1" style is present in the text imported from Word.
You will need to perform this step for all lines of text that match the title of the slides
Step 6. Select the text corresponding to the content of the first slide
At this point, you will need to select the body of the paragraph or section of the Word document that matches the content of the first slide. In this step, be careful not to include the title in the selection as well.
Make sure there is at least one blank line between the slide title and the corresponding text
Step 7. Click on the Heading 2 style in Word's "Styles" panel
The selected text will be formatted with the "Heading 2" style. Text formatted with this style will appear on the same slide as the title.
You can divide the text that will become the content of the slide into multiple sections, to make it appear in separate blocks within the slide, by pressing the key Enter. Each paragraph or line of text you have created will become an item in a bulleted list that will appear on the slide.
Step 8. You can add sub-points using the Heading 3 style (optional)
If you format a piece of text in your Word document with the "Heading 3" style, it will appear within the slide as an underlay of the previous line of text. In this case, the structure of the corresponding slide will be as follows:
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Text formatted with the "Heading 2" style.
Text formatted with the "Heading 3" style
Step 9. Separate each slide with a blank space
Press the button Enter before each new title. This way, you will create the outline for PowerPoint. Each line of text that is larger and displayed in bold will indicate a title, while the smaller text below will represent the content of the slide. When PowerPoint encounters a blank line and immediately following a title, it will automatically create a new slide.
Step 10. Customize the text according to your needs
Once you've structured your Word document text so that it can be automatically imported into PowerPoint, you can format it however you want by changing its size, color, and font. At this point, the text no longer has to be blue or bold, as it has already been formatted for import into PowerPoint.
If at this point you delete the empty space between two lines of text or if you had to add new content, the document would no longer be structured correctly for importing into PowerPoint, so it is always better to make this type of changes only at the last
Step 11. Save the document
After completing the formatting of the document, click on the menu File, choose the item Save with name, click on the button Browse and choose the folder in which to store the file. Give the file a meaningful name, such as "Doc_PowerPoint_Structure" or something similar, then click the button Save.
At this point you can close the Word window so that the program does not conflict with PowerPoint in the next steps
Method 2 of 2: Import the Document into PowerPoint
Step 1. Launch PowerPoint
The corresponding icon is displayed in the Windows "Start" menu or in the "Applications" folder on Mac.
Step 2. Click the Open button
If it is not visible in the program window, click on the menu File and choose the option You open.
Step 3. Click the Browse button
A new dialog will appear.
Step 4. Navigate to the folder where you stored the Word document that you structured and formatted to be imported into PowerPoint
Don't worry if the file you created isn't visible.
Step 5. Select the All Outlines option from the drop-down menu which, by default, shows "PowerPoint Presentations"
The Word document you saved earlier should now appear.
Step 6. Select the Word file and click the Open button
PowerPoint will create a presentation based on the text structure of the Word document. All lines of text that you have formatted with the "Heading 1" style will appear within a separate slide, along with the corresponding content that you have formatted with the "Heading 2" style. At this point, you can edit the individual slides using as many PowerPoint tools as you like according to your needs.
PowerPoint and Word don't import and convert images automatically, so you'll need to manually import them within the slide where they are to appear in your presentation
Step 7. Save the file as a PowerPoint presentation
To perform this step, click on the menu File, select the item Save with name, choose the folder where to store the file, then save it by adding the extension . PPTX.
