PowerPoint is the benchmark for Windows presentation generation software. To make sure that all Windows users can read these files, Microsoft offers an official and free viewer.
PowerPoint is Microsoft’s official tool for creating dynamic presentations that captivate audiences.
Microsoft PowerPoint is used in the professional environment to present the results or the strategy of the company as well as in the educational world to illustrate presentations or group work, as well as in the personal sphere to animate photos at events like a birthday or a wedding.
Easy to learn, it allows you to highlight ideas using graphics and tables, scroll through slides with pleasant and modern transitions, and insert images, sounds, and videos.
If you do not have the Microsoft Office suite installed on your machine, you will not be able to open a PPT, PPTM, or PPTX file. These are extensions of documents produced with PowerPoint. Until April 30, 2018, Microsoft provided a “PowerPoint Viewer” free of charge, but this program is no longer available. Instead, the Redmond firm offers to save the presentation on OneDrive or Dropbox and open it using the PowerPoint service on the Web. Another more convenient solution for Windows 10 users is to store the free PowerPoint Mobile app.
How do you open a presentation – Installing and Using PowerPoint Mobile
For Windows 10 users, PowerPoint Mobile is the most recommended alternative. As its name suggests, it is intended for use on mobile devices. This does not prevent it from being fully functional on computers. Find it from the Microsoft Store, it can be installed easily and free of charge. By selecting the “Launch” button from the Windows Store or by opening the Windows menu and searching for “PowerPoint Mobile”, the application is run.
It offers a basic welcome, containing a “Browse” button from which you can open all types of presentations created with Microsoft PowerPoint. This is because the file extensions supported by PowerPoint Mobile are PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX, PPTM, and PPSM.
As soon as the document is opened, the grey window shades the edit buttons and specifies in a banner that “To modify and save the file, an Office 365 subscription is required”. This does not prevent you from reading the content of presentations created from Microsoft PowerPoint. By exploring the “Slideshow” tab and selecting the “From Beginning” button or by using the F5 key on your keyboard, you start playing the presentation in full-screen mode.
The use of PowerPoint Mobile is extremely restricted since, without an Office 365 account, it runs in read-only mode. However, it can print presentations and is not limited in the number of files. You can use it at will to open all the PPT, PPTX, PPTM, and other documents that you receive from your contacts who use PowerPoint.
Suppose you have an Office 365 subscription, the doors to creating easy presentations open to you. All the main features of PowerPoint are present and designed for a touch interface. We can, of course, edit and add new slides, insert titles, graphics, images and several audio and video file formats (including AIFF, MP3, MIDI, MP4, WAV, WMA, ASF, AVI, MOV, MPEG, MWV). Compared to the full version of PowerPoint offered in Office 365, it cannot mainly integrate content from YouTube or Vimeo into a slide.
Open a presentation using PowerPoint on the Web-
Microsoft offers a second method to display PowerPoint presentations for free. It is entirely online; you must have an OneDrive account (free or paid both works) to use it. The first step is to go to the cloud storage service site and authenticate it. The presentation must then be sent to Microsoft’s servers. To do this, select the “Upload” button to send the file or folder concerned to your OneDrive space.
Once the upload is complete, select the document from the OneDrive window to open the presentation in the web version of PowerPoint. This iteration uses the graphic codes and the functionalities of the desktop version of the software. To view the slides in full screen, the only way is to go through “View” and “Read from Beginning”, since the F5 key refreshes the browser tab.
The only constraint of PowerPoint on OneDrive is to require an Internet connection. That said, unlike PowerPoint Mobile, it is not limited to read-only and provides free access to all authoring tools, transitions, animations, and media insertion. From the “File” menu, you can print, share, and load the presentation at any time.
Using PowerPoint Viewer (Old Method)
If you are not using Windows 10 or planning to have internet where you want to read the presentation, you have a solution left. Until April 2018, Microsoft maintained the “PowerPoint viewer” software, which was the official tool for reading PowerPoint files on computers not equipped with the Office suite. If development has been abandoned, it is still possible to retrieve the installation file from the link below.
Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer is an extremely basic tool. Only one menu is accessible, either with a right-click or by selecting the button in the status bar. It allows you to navigate previous or next slides, print or copy the slide, activate full-screen mode, or stop the slide show. Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer supports PPTX, PPT, PPTM, PPSX, PPS, PPSM, POTX, POT, POTM, and ODP file formats.
Keep in mind:-
To maintain PowerPoint’s leadership in creating presentations for the general public, Microsoft does not hesitate to offer several solutions to allow everyone to open the files generated with its software. So people who don’t have an Office license can at least open presentations read-only.
The PowerPoint Mobile application is to be recommended to all Windows 10 users since it integrates perfectly with this operating system and can be easily installed from the Microsoft Store. However, some may find themselves frustrated that it does not allow any changes.
Suppose you have an Internet connection where you will read the presentation and a Microsoft account (even without an Office 365 subscription). In that case, you can transfer it to your OneDrive space to open it from your browser, using PowerPoint on the Web. In addition to opening and reading PowerPoint files, the interface of this online service allows you to make all kinds of additions and modifications and to save the document.
Finally, if you are not using Windows 10 and do not have Internet access to read the presentation, there is still the old Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer. Even if Microsoft no longer supports it, it allows you to open presentations of various formats on all configurations.
