Convert PDF to PowerPoint

When do you need to convert a PDF to PowerPoint?

Usually when you have a presentation only as a PDF, for example slides a lecturer shared after class or a deck a colleague exported, and you want to show it in PowerPoint or Google Slides, add your own slides before or after it, or write speaker notes. It is also a quick way to project a PDF document full-screen page by page.

What the tool does exactly

It is important to know this before converting: the tool does not rebuild editable slides. It draws each PDF page as a picture and places that picture on its own slide.

• Every PDF page becomes one slide containing a single image that covers the whole slide.
• Pages are rendered at twice their normal size and saved as JPEG, so they look sharp on screen.
• The slide size is taken from the first page: a 16:9 deck gives widescreen slides, and an A4 portrait document gives tall slides. Pages keep their proportions and are never stretched.
• A later page with a different shape is fitted inside the slide and centred, with white bars around it.
• Text, tables and charts can't be edited, and links in the PDF stop working.

How to convert a PDF to PowerPoint

1. 1
   Choose a PDF or drag it onto the box.
2. 2
   Click "Convert to PowerPoint Now". The status line counts the slides as they are created.
3. 3
   Click "Download PowerPoint (.pptx)". The file keeps your PDF's name.
4. 4
   Open it in PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote or LibreOffice Impress and check slides where the page shape changes.

Which PDFs give a good result?

• Good fit: slides exported from PowerPoint or Google Slides. Each page fills its slide and looks like the original.
• Think about the screen: A4 documents and forms become portrait slides, fine on a laptop but mostly empty on a widescreen projector. To place a page in a widescreen slide yourself, export it with PDF to JPG or PDF to PNG and insert the image.
• Mixed files: every slide takes the first page's shape, so pages in the other orientation appear smaller.
• Need to change the words? Use PDF to Word to get editable text, then paste it into your slides.

Limitations

• No editable text boxes, shapes or tables: each slide is one image. You can add new text boxes on top of it.
• All slides share one size, set by the first page.
• Links, bookmarks, form fields and annotations are not carried over as interactive elements.
• The .pptx grows with the page count, since every slide holds a full-size image. Long PDFs depend on your device's memory.
• The library that builds the .pptx file is loaded from a public CDN, so the page needs an internet connection when it opens.

Where is the processing done?

pdf.js draws the pages and PptxGenJS writes the presentation, both running in your browser. The conversion uses your device's processor, and the slides you download were never stored anywhere else.

PDF to PowerPoint: frequently asked questions