Best “Neutral” PowerPoint Creator

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So I work in the Public Schools and you guessed it, I work with Google Products and frankly, I do not like Google Slides. Is there a PowerPoint style Application that is as intuitive as Keynote but can convert easily between Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint? I find that the conversion between the two is where I run into issues.

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I haven’t used any slide software in decades, but I know you can export Keynote slides as PowerPoint and upload the PPT to Google Drive.

Then:

  1. In Drive, double-click a PowerPoint file. A preview of your file opens.

  2. At the top, click Open with Google Slides. Any changes you make are saved to the original Microsoft Office file.

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What features do you think Google Slides is missing? My work migrated to G Suite more than a decade ago and while it took some time to get used to, now I feel umcomfortable using Powerpoint and my decks are no worse than before (not that they are that good to begin with).

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Issue I’m running into is that often when you do an entire slide deck on Keynote the formatting goes askew when you open it in PowerPoint or opening the PowerPoint file in Google Slides. Docs/Pages/Word tends to convert the best because there is less design flourish at play. But PowerPoint has been a headache for me. Going between PowerPoint and Slides is also a frustration. (Currently iPad as my primary computer so that might be the source of my frustration - PowerPoint buries the font bar on iPad - saving my sheckles for a MacBook.)

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The biggest frustration I have with Google slides is (a) Google Slides for iPad is half baked and (b) they do not appear to have slide outline view for notes which is both a feature in PowerPoint and Keynote and is handy for students.

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I also use an iPad as my primary computer and that may indeed be the problem. As I mentioned, I don’t use Slides, etc. but I do use Sheets and Docs. And use Safari (or Chrome) to create them, not the iPad app. (Once I have created a new worksheet, document, etc, I normally use the iPad app to add and review data)

As you may know if you have the iPad app installed Safari will default to it if you choose Slides from the Google Workspace 3x3 application menu. So once logged into Google Workspace, type slides.new into the address bar and the Slides application will open in Safari.

Docs.new and Sheets.new work the same way.

This is, IMO, an excellent site for iPad productivity tips

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I have never found slide conversion to do much more than a minimal transfer of the actual content (text, images, speaker notes). Formatting goes out the window. Depending on your design templates, the typefaces may differ as will the font sizes and margins. Animation effects and timings are tricky too.

Just wondering if you can bypass this whole issue by using Keynote and connecting the iPad to run your slides. Then upload/share a PDF with the class?

Otherwise, you might have some luck breaking down the settings of your slide masters and match the same parameters for the Google Slides.

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I’d suggest testing the free trial of iA Presenter, but so far it’s Mac only.

Still, I tend to agree with @airwhale that it saves a lot of grief and extra work to just accept the limitations and learn the quirks of whatever slide app your deck is going to end up in.

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I think I am going to commit to the App Canva which is like a whole productivity suite to up your design game for teachers.

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Canva was going to be my suggestion. It looks kind of cool. Though I didn’t know slides were a thing in Canva until I saw PhD candidates using it for their dissertation defenses.