Convert PowerPoint to PDF

The reason to convert before sending

A .pptx does not carry its fonts. Open it on a machine that lacks them and every text box is re-laid out in a substitute, which changes line breaks, pushes text out of its box and overlaps things that were carefully placed. Animations, transitions and embedded video are also either missing or broken depending on what the recipient is using.

A PDF has the fonts inside it. It looks the same on a phone, in an email preview, on a projector laptop that has never had your typeface installed, and in ten years. For anything you are sending rather than editing, that is the format you want.

One slide per page, at the slide's own shape

Each slide becomes one page at the aspect ratio the deck was designed in — 16:9 for a modern deck, 4:3 for an older one — rather than being forced onto A4. That means no letterboxing and no cropping, and printing gives you a slide centred on the paper, which is what a slide handout should look like.

What comes across and what does not

Text, images, shapes, charts, tables, gradients and slide backgrounds all convert. Hyperlinks stay clickable. Speaker notes do not appear, since the output is the slides rather than the notes view.

Animations and transitions cannot convert, because a PDF page does not move. A slide with elements that build up one by one comes out with everything visible at once — which is usually what you want in a handout and occasionally spoils a reveal.

Embedded audio and video become the poster frame or a blank rectangle. If a video is central to the deck, send the deck.

PDF/A for anything being filed

The archival option produces PDF/A-2b, which embeds every font, forbids external dependencies, and is what document management systems, court filings, journals and institutional repositories ask for. It makes the file bigger and is the right choice whenever something must still render correctly long after the software that made it is gone.

For an ordinary deck going to a colleague, leave it off.

.ppt, .pptx and .odp

All three convert. The old binary .ppt format is handled, and so is OpenDocument .odp from LibreOffice and OpenOffice, which is worth knowing if you have been sent a deck by someone who does not use Microsoft Office.

If your fonts come out wrong

Conversion runs on a server, and a server has a standard set of fonts rather than yours. A deck built in a licensed corporate typeface will be rendered in the nearest available substitute — which is exactly the problem you were trying to avoid, only happening here instead of at the recipient's end.

The reliable fix is to export the PDF from PowerPoint itself, on the machine that has the fonts. This tool is the right answer when you do not have PowerPoint, or you are on a phone, or the file arrived in a format your software will not open.