Microsoft 365 solutions on the web such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel are handy tools for those who are willing to compromise on a few features and still be able to use these services in a browser without having to sacrifice storage space. Today, Microsoft has announced enhancements to the web version of Word, which now features the capability to automatically convert your work into a PowerPoint slide deck.
Users with Microsoft 365 subscriptions can simply open their Word document on the web, click on File > Export > Export to PowerPoint presentation, select the theme, and then wait a couple of seconds while the service automatically converts it into a PowerPoint slide deck.
In our testing (sample screenshot above, click to zoom), the feature seems to work quite well and creates a full-fledged presentation in only a couple of seconds. While it captured the gist of the document sufficiently well, it is important to know that it does not fully replace the need for creating a slide deck manually. This is because of a few caveats. Currently, it only caters to textual content and ignores any media-based content such as images in the document. Secondly, the results aren't perfect since it's powered by AI and will do the processing based on its own learning, the organization of the document, and the keywords used in it. Indeed, in one case in our testing, it converted a properly formatted five-page document into a four-slide presentation which barely contained any of the information mentioned in the original work.
That said, it can act as a great starting point for creating a slide deck as it takes care of a lot of boilerplate effort and automatically saves the slide deck in your OneDrive.
Lastly, it is important to note that this conversion process currently supports the English language only, and is not available on Safari and Internet Explorer. According to the support webpage, it is available for select users only right now and will be gradually rolling out to everyone around the globe.
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