How do I get PowerPoint presentation to display properly without having PowerPoint?

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Level 1

27 points

How do I get PowerPoint presentation to display properly without having PowerPoint?

Suggestions on how to get PowerPoint presentation to display properly aligned on MacBookPro? These are available for download as ppt, pps & pdf

Our co just came out with new presentations in PowerPoint. They are going toward iPad2, & suggest using Documents to Go on an iPad. But I'm trying to play the presentation on my MacBookPro 13" (April 2010), Snow Leopard. I have iWork & so it opens in Keynote which does not display it quite right. The alignment is off--it appears that the relationships between text boxes isn't quite the same. So there is a long table with arrows pointing to the totals at the bottom but the arrows are over the text.

I tried looking at it in Parallels 5 (Win 7) & it opened in Open Office. That looked better, but several slides aren't aligned right. They have horizontal lines between bullet points & the lines "creep" so that as it goes down the page the lines move up closer to the text & then on top of the text.

Not real up on PowerPoint or Keynote, but I'm guessing maybe the resolution or something is different that throws the alignment off. I am learning Keynote but had just dabbled with PowerPoint & of course had played slide shows created in PowerPoint that had been sent to me which usually didn't have as much text. Also if its just me looking at it, I can manage if it isn't lined up right, but to show to others, it needs to look

I need these to display properly since this is something to use with prospective clients. Also the presentation is designed so that different offices can select which slides they want to use. Our office is not using all of them. So I need to be able to select the slides as well as have them display properly.

Wondering if I could choose a power point reader with the pps to play it rather than having Keynote if that would work, but not sure how to do that.

I think the pdf displayed properly, but don't think I can select slides with that.

So how can I be able to select PowerPoint slides, & get them to display properly? At 1st I thought it might be that I didn't have the font used, but it shows as Trebuchet MS which also shows in my font list on the mac side.

I would prefer not to have to buy PowerPoint & would prefer to not have to use Parallels or Bootcamp, although I can if needed. I purchased Outlook 2007 for Windows which I used to use to sync with my old Win mobile phone. thankfully I was able to get rid of that & get an iPhone & now use the iLife aps rather than needing Outlook.

Also related to this presentation are related files that can be downloaded in either mp3 or mp4. I really don't know what the difference is or why choose one or the other.

Message was edited by: KathiMR

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Win7 32b in bootcamp&VM in Parall5

Posted on Feb 14, 2012 12:59 AM

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Answer 1

KathiMR Author

Level 1

27 points

Feb 15, 2012 2:01 AM in response to KathiMR

🙂 OK, I found what seems to work. That is to open the actual ppt version of the download (not the one that had already been opened & saved in Keynote) in Open Office. So I had to open Open Office & then navigate to the file to open it so that it didn't open in Keynote.

At a One to One training on Keynote where I asked for help with this today he noted that it showed that the presentation had been created in an older version of PowerPoint--apparently 2003 for Windows which could explain some of the issues.

Opening it in Open office it displayed mostly ok. There were 2 or 3 or so slides where I had to tweak horizontal lines between bullet points that had crept up so some where through the text rather than under it. So I just selected the lines & nudged them into position.

Its not perfect & for some reason, some of the lines seem a hair thicker than others (which I guess I could go back & figure out how to use the line thickness tool to adjust, but think I will leave well enough alone for now).

As near as I can tell, this seems to work about equally well doing this on the Mac side or in Parallels in Windows 7. So will stick with the Mac side.

This allows me to run the slide show with me controlling when the different bullet points, etc display. It didn't have any exotic animations or transitions--just rather plain vanilla ones.

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