How to Convert Word to PowerPoint

Last Updated: November 22, 2021

Are you having trouble converting your Word document into a PowerPoint presentation? With a few formatting changes, you can actually save yourself the hassle of retyping everything and convert your Word document right to PowerPoint. This wikihow article will teach you how to convert your Word document to a Powerpoint.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:
Formatting the Word Document

1
Open your document using Microsoft Word. Double-click your Word document to open it for editing. Before you try to convert a Word document to a PowerPoint presentation, you'll have to adjust the formatting so it can translate PowerPoint slides.
2
Separate the Word document into sections with titles. For PowerPoint to properly import the Word document, you'll need to break the document into separate sections that will become individual slides. 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 "Works Cited." At the top of that section, you'd type "Words Cited" 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.
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3
Navigate to the "Styles" menu. Click the Home tab if you're not already there—you will then see a "Styles" panel in the toolbar at the top of Word. In it are several formatting examples labeled "Normal," "No Spacing," "Heading 1," etc.
4
Highlight the title of your first slide/section. Just click and drag your mouse across the entire title to select it.
5
Click the Heading 1 style. The text will become large, bolded, and colored blue. PowerPoint will know to use everything with the "Header 1" style as a new slide.
- You will need to do this for all slides in your document.
6
Highlight the remaining content of your first slide. Now you'll need to select the rest of the text you want to add to the first slide—don't include the title in the highlighted area—just the content of the slide.
- Make sure you have at least one blank line between the title and the rest of the slide's content.
7
Click Heading 2 on the Styles panel. Everything in the Heading 2 format will appear on the same slide as the title.
- 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.
8
Add sub-bullets using Heading 3 (optional). 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"
9
Separate each slide with a space. 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.
10
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 do this step last.
11
Save the document. Once you're finished formatting your entire document, click the File menu, select Save as, click Browse, and choose a folder to save the file to. Give the file a name like "Outline" or something similar, and then click Save.
- Close Word when you're finished so there are no conflicts with PowerPoint in the remaining steps.
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Method 2

Method 2 of 2:
Converting to PowerPoint

1
Open PowerPoint. It'll be in your Windows Start menu on Windows, or in the Applications folder on macOS.
2
Click the Open option. If you don't see it, click the File menu and then select Open.
3
Click Browse. This opens your file browser.
4
Navigate to the folder in which you saved your Word document outline. Don't panic if you don't see the outline!
5
Select All outlines from the drop-down menu. This is the menu that says "All PowerPoint Presentations" by default. You should now see the Word document you saved earlier.
6
Select your Word document and click Open. PowerPoint will now create a presentation consisting of the slides you created in your Word document. 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.
7
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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