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Open and present a PowerPoint file on a Mac without PowerPoint

. 4 minute read. By JOV

A .pptx file is a PowerPoint presentation. You may need to read one that a colleague sent, change a few slides, or present it from your own Mac. Each of those is possible without PowerPoint, with different trade-offs.

If you only need to read the slides

Select the file in Finder and press the Space bar. Quick Look shows the slides one after another, and you can scroll through them or use the thumbnails at the side. You don’t see speaker notes or hidden slides, and you can’t edit, but it is the fastest way to find out what a deck says.

Keynote

Keynote is Apple’s presentation app. It is free and comes with most Macs. It opens .pptx files by converting them to Keynote documents, and it lists what it changed, most often fonts that aren’t installed on your Mac.

Keynote is very good at presenting. The catch is the conversion. Text boxes can shift when a font is replaced, and some transitions and animations are swapped for the nearest Keynote equivalent. To send the deck back you choose File > Export To > PowerPoint, which converts it a second time. If the deck is yours to keep, that doesn’t matter. If it has to go back to people who use PowerPoint, look through the exported file before you send it.

Google Slides

Upload the file to Google Drive and open it with Google Slides. You can edit it in the browser, present from the browser, and get a PowerPoint file again with File > Download > Microsoft PowerPoint. It is free with a Google account, and several people can edit at once.

It needs an internet connection, which is a risk in a meeting room with poor Wi-Fi, and the file is stored on Google’s servers. PowerPoint for the web from Microsoft works in a similar way with a Microsoft account.

LibreOffice

LibreOffice Impress opens and saves .pptx files and also reads the older .ppt format. It is free and works offline. Slide layouts with unusual fonts or effects often need tidying after opening, and the app doesn’t feel like a Mac app, but it is the best free choice for an old .ppt file.

JOV Office

JOV Office opens a .pptx file as it is and saves it as .pptx, so there is no conversion on the way in or out.

A quarterly review slide being edited in JOV Office, with the slide thumbnails at the left.

To change a deck, switch to Edit Mode (View > Edit Mode). You can:

  • edit the text on a slide and in its speaker notes
  • move, resize and delete shapes and pictures, and add new ones
  • add a slide from the deck’s own layouts, duplicate or hide slides, and drag the thumbnails into a different order
  • choose a transition for a slide or for all slides

To present:

  • View > Play Slide Show, or Command-Return, starts from the current slide.
  • View > Play from Start begins at the first slide.
  • View > Play with Presenter View shows your notes, the next slide and a timer on your screen, and the slides on the second display or projector.

During the show, press B or W for a black or white screen, and type a slide number followed by Return to jump to that slide. Hidden slides are skipped.

Its limits:

  • Transitions between slides play. Animations inside a slide don’t: the slide appears in its final state, with every item visible. If a slide depends on items appearing one by one, split it into several slides or present from PowerPoint or Keynote.
  • You can search a deck, but there is no Find and Replace for slides.
  • It opens .pptx, not the older .ppt format.

If you need the slides as something other than a presentation, File > Export To > PDF makes a PDF of the deck, and File > Export To > Images saves each slide as a PNG or JPEG.

JOV Office works offline, needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and is free for 7 days, then $2 a month or $15 a year.

Before you present from any app

Whichever app you use, open the file on the Mac you will present from, ahead of time, and check these:

  1. Go through every slide once in the slide show, not only in the editor. Font changes show up as text that runs out of its box.
  2. Check slides with charts and tables. They are the first to shift.
  3. If the deck uses a special font, install it on your Mac or ask for a PDF as a fallback.
  4. Connect the projector or second display and see which screen the slides appear on.
  5. Keep a PDF copy of the deck on the Mac. If anything goes wrong, a PDF in full screen still gets you through the talk.

Which one to use

  • To read a deck, press Space in Finder.
  • To present a deck you own and don’t need to send back, Keynote is a good choice.
  • To edit a deck together with other people, use Google Slides or PowerPoint for the web.
  • To change a few slides and send the same .pptx back, or to present it offline with your notes in front of you, use JOV Office.
  • For a deck that relies on animations, or an old .ppt file, use PowerPoint, Keynote or LibreOffice.

To make your chosen app open every presentation, select a .pptx file in Finder, press Command-I, pick the app under “Open with” and click Change All.

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