how to convert word outline to powerpoint presentation

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Microsoft Word

How to Convert a Word Document to a PowerPoint Presentation

Last Updated: June 14, 2024

Formatting the Document Before Converting

Converting to powerpoint.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Nicole Levine is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. She has more than 20 years of experience creating technical documentation and leading support teams at major web hosting and software companies. Nicole also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Portland State University and teaches composition, fiction-writing, and zine-making at various institutions. This article has been viewed 959,689 times. Learn more...

This wikiHow article will show you the best way to convert a Microsoft Word document into a PowerPoint presentation on your PC or Mac. By making a few quick formatting changes to your document, you can import the document into PowerPoint and automatically create pre-formatted slides without having to retype anything!

Exporting Word Documents to PowerPoint

In Word, highlight and change your title text to “Heading 1” and the information under each title to “Heading 2.” Save your document. In PowerPoint, open a blank presentation and click New Slide > Slides from Outline. Select your Word document and click “Insert.”

Step 1 Separate the Word document into sections with titles.

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 "Sales." At the top of that section, you'd type "Sales" 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.

If you don't see style examples on the toolbar, click the Styles menu to view them.

Step 3 Highlight the title of your first slide/section.

Once you change the first title to "Header 1," go through the rest of your document and do the same with other slide titles. You'll want all of the titles to be set to this style so they'll convert properly.

Step 5 Highlight the rest of the content on your first page.

Make sure you have at least one blank line between the title and the rest of the page's content.

Step 6 Select Heading 2 on the Styles panel.

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.

Step 7 Add sub-bullets using Heading 3 (optional).

Text formatted with "Heading 3"

Step 8 Separate each slide with a blank line.

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.

Close Word when you're finished so there are no conflicts with PowerPoint in the remaining steps.

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.

Step 6 Save the file as a PowerPoint presentation.

Expert Q&A

↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-a-powerpoint-presentation-from-an-outline-f6294909-04e9-4020-b9a8-4587b112692c
↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/import-a-word-outline-into-powerpoint-a25f6e01-9a19-4c0d-a108-7f533e42dfe9

About This Article

1. Break the document into sections with titles. 2. Apply the "Heading 1" style to each section title. 3. Apply the "Heading 2" style to each section's content. 4. Separate each slide with a blank line. 5. Save the document as a new file. 6. Open PowerPoint and click Browse . 7. Navigate to the folder containing the Word document. 8. Select All Outlines from the drop-down menu. 9. Select the Word document and click Open . 10. Edit and save as a PowerPoint presentation. Did this summary help you? Yes No