I was on the Twitters today and came across a question from a person who wanted to know if it was easy to convert a PDF file into a PowerPoint. Actually, she wanted to know if it was possible to convert an “Adobe” into a PowerPoint. Don’t get me started…
Turns out there’s a website that’s free to use which does a decent job: convertpdftopowerpoint.com.
I tried it out on a couple of PDFs just to see what would happen. To be clear, these PDFs were never intended for presentation, so please don’t call me out for the text-heavy slides. If you cast your mind back to dinosaur days for a moment, you’ll remember that text-heavy pages are ideal for print, the original vehicle for these PDFs.
Here’s the scoop
The conversion is really amazing! The process creates editable text boxes and placed graphics, which is really cool. There were only three problems with converted files that I’d like to point out:
- Color Shifts: My first conversion was of a client’s PDF that uses a shade of Kelly green that transformed into lime green in PowerPoint. The same thing happened to my own logo, shown below. If accurate color is important to you, you’ll need to be careful.
- Font Shifts: My marketing one-sheet was created on a Mac using a purchased font. It converted to Arial in the PowerPoint, which is the expected result of creating editable text boxes. Again, for some people this will be important, but experienced PowerPoint users know that you either go with a standard Windows font on your presentations or you embed fonts if it’s really necessary.
- Solid Drop Shadows: Drop shadows changed from fuzzy and transparent to solid and opaque.
Bottom Line
convertpdftopowerpoint.com is a great starting point for re-creating PowerPoint decks from PDF files. If you have a bunch of text in a PDF that you don’t want to retype or want to transform a PDF graphic into something viewable in PowerPoint (watch that resolution, though), this is the utility for you.