Weekly Computer Tip # 228
5 April 2008

Convert your Word documents to PowerPoint presentations (Office 2003-2007)

Have you ever had to turn a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation? Perhaps you received the content from somebody else, as a Word document? Or perhaps you sent a Word document for review to your colleagues, as the file size of a PowerPoint presentation can be very large and you didn't want to send that large file via email? Well, all you need to do is apply Word's built-in heading styles to your text and PowerPoint will do the rest. (Or if you are still using Office 2003 ... Word will do the rest, as you can simply choose Word's File, Send to Microsoft PowerPoint command.)

Here's how:

1. Click on PowerPoint's Home tab.
2. In the Slides group, click the down arrow below to New Slide button.
3. Select Slides from Outline.
4. Locate and double-click the Word document you want to convert to PowerPoint.

Heading1 styles will be turned into titles (creating a new slide for every time you used a Heading1 style) and Heading2 styles will be bulleted lists. If your Word document doesn't contain heading styles, the presentation will be created based on the paragraphs in your Word document. (But I never really like the result.)

By the way, if you really miss that Send to Microsoft PowerPoint command (I do!) you can add that button to your Quick Access Toolbar, which I will explain in one of my next tips.

Finally, thanks for Stuart Cleary of Black Orchid Marketing for the inspiration of this week's tip!

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