How to get your Power Point presentation on the iPad
I’ve gotten many questions recently from clients who have recently purchased the Apple iPad and now want to use it for their Power Point presentations. And what a great concept this is, imagine going into a meeting with nothing more then the thin iPad in your hands, plugging in the projector and giving your presentation. Compared to a clunky laptop doing your presentations from an iPad gives the message to your audience that you are on the cutting edge of tech plus you are incredibly confident. Presenting from a tablet is very new at the moment but I’m
sure it will become commonplace in a year’s time. But for the moment power point users and designers tell me it is a total blast!
OK. So the question is, I’ve got a Power Point design that I created on my PC or Mac and I want to show it on my iPad. How do I do this?
Well, first off, don’t bother looking for a version of PowerPoint that runs on the iPad. Doesn’t exist and probably will not exist for quite awhile (although if the iPad user base becomes large enough Microsoft will make a version for iPad). But for now we need to find another way. Fortunately it is pretty simple. Here’s how you do it:
First off, go to the iPad app store and purchase Keynote for iPad. Keynote is like PowerPoint and works quite similar to it. If you know how to work Power Point you will find Keynote to be quick to pick up. The cost of Keynote for iPad is only $9.99. Gotta love that. Note that this version of Keynote is different then the full version, but it offers solid functionality for the price, actually a lot of bang for the buck.
Next, take your Power Point and email it to the account you use on your iPad, in other words, email it to yourself so you have it on your iPad.
Next, start up Keynote on your iPad and import your existing Power Point presentation. Your presentation should convert well to Keynote but note that you will have to put the transitions in manually on the iPad.
Now, if your presentation does not convert well in Keynote here’s the workaround. Export your slides as JPG’s out of your existing PowerPoint design, email them over to the iPad, and manually recreate your presentation with the Keynote app. For most presentations of less then 20 slides it should take you only about 30-40 minutes to get it set up. Faster once you get experienced on the Keynote app.
This is the best way we have found so far but we are exploring others. If you have found something that solves this a different way feel free to comment.
