Presentations

#What it is

Presentations (app id slides) is Octoolo's slide editor and slideshow, for the jobs people use Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote or LibreOffice Impress for: pitch decks, lessons, project updates and talks. It opens and saves PowerPoint files (.pptx), presents the slides full screen, and saves them as a PDF.

Slides are 16:9 widescreen (13.333 × 7.5 inches, PowerPoint's default size) and hold text boxes, pictures and shapes that you place freely, on one of seven themes. Each slide has speaker notes.

Everything happens on the PC: files are opened and saved where the person chooses, and nothing is uploaded. Presentations works offline.

#Opening it and what it costs

• On the home screen Presentations is in the Documents group, next to the PDF Editor, Documents and Spreadsheets. The home search finds it by words like "powerpoint", "pptx", "slides", "deck", "keynote", "slideshow" or "present".
• Address inside Octoolo: #/app/slides. A shortcut can open it with Octoolo.exe --open=app/slides (this opens the app; it cannot open a particular file).
• Presentations needs Octoolo Cloud (the subscription) or its free trial. Prices, the trial and the free apps are in Prices and limits.
• Octoolo does not register itself with Windows for .pptx files: double-clicking one in File Explorer still opens PowerPoint (or whatever program Windows uses). To open a file in Presentations, use Open a file, pick it under Recent, or drag it onto the start screen.
• The Help and feedback button (speech bubble) at the right of the title bar opens Octoolo's Help and feedback page about Presentations, where a message can be sent to Octoolo's support.

#Tasks

Presentations is one editor with no separate tasks. In the catalog the whole app is the entry presentation-editor (Presentation editor): "Make slides and present them. Opens and saves PowerPoint files."

#The start screen: new presentations, templates, recent files and drafts

Presentations opens on a start screen: "Opens and saves PowerPoint presentation files (.pptx). Everything stays on this computer."

• Open a file (top right) shows Windows' Open dialog for .pptx files.
• Continue where you left off appears when the last presentation had changes that were not saved (see "Drafts and recovery in Presentations"). Continue opens it with those changes; Discard throws the draft away.
• Start something new: Blank presentation ("Start from nothing": one title slide on the Paper theme) and three templates, each shown by its first slide:
  • Pitch deck ("Problem, solution, team"), Ink theme, 6 slides: Your company, The problem, Our solution, Why now, Team, Thank you.
  • Lesson ("For a class"), Sunrise theme, 5 slides: Today's lesson, What we will learn, Key idea, Try it, Remember.
  • Project update ("Done, next, risks"), Paper theme, 3 slides: Project update, Where we are (Done and Next), Risks and help needed. When Octoolo runs in Spanish, Portuguese or German, the template text is in that language. A new presentation is called "Untitled.pptx" (or the template's name) until it is saved.
• Recent lists the .pptx files opened or saved in Presentations, newest first. "Moved or deleted" marks a file that is gone; the x ("Remove from the list") takes one off the list without touching the file.
• Dropping a file anywhere on the start screen opens it (only the first file, when several are dropped). A dropped file is not added to Recent and has no place on disk yet, so Save asks where to save it.

#How to open and edit a PowerPoint file

1. Open Presentations from the home screen.
2. Press Open a file and choose the .pptx, or click it under Recent, or drag it onto the start screen.
3. If the deck holds things Presentations cannot keep, a message at the bottom names them for a few seconds, for example "Octoolo could not keep this presentation's tables, animations and transitions."
4. Click a slide in the column on the left. Double-click a text box to type in it; drag things to move them; type speaker notes in the box under the slide.
5. Press F5 to present from the first slide, or Present for the slide you are on.
6. Press Save (Ctrl+S) to save over the .pptx. If step 3 showed a message, Presentations first asks "Replace the original <name>?": Replace the original overwrites it, Save as a new file saves a new .pptx and leaves the original as it was.

The title bar shows the file's name and "Saved", "Unsaved changes", "Not saved yet" or "Saving…". The status bar shows "Slide 3 of 12", a tip, and the theme's name.

#Slides: adding, layouts, reordering and deleting in Presentations

• Slide in the toolbar (Ctrl+M) adds a slide with the "Title and text" layout after the one you are on. Its arrow ("New slide with a layout") shows the seven layouts: Title, Title and text, Two columns, Section, Picture and text, Big statement and Blank. New slide at the bottom of the slide column adds one at the end.
• Layouts are starting points: text boxes (and, for Section and Picture and text, a shape) placed on the slide. "Picture and text" has a rounded panel where a picture can go; add the picture with Picture and place it there. Changing a slide's layout afterwards is not possible.
• Empty text boxes show grey hints such as "Click to add a title", "Add a subtitle", "Add your points", "Left column", "Right column", "Section title", "What this part is about", "Say what the picture shows" and "One big idea". Hints are not text: they do not show when presenting or in a PDF, and an empty box is not saved in the .pptx.
• Reorder: drag a slide in the column on the left onto another slide's place.
• Right-click a slide in the column: New slide after this, Duplicate, Move up, Move down, Present from here, Delete. Deleting does not ask; Undo (Ctrl+Z) brings it back. Deleting the only slide leaves one blank slide.
• Page Down / Page Up (or the Down / Up arrows when nothing is selected) go to the next and previous slide while editing.

#Text boxes in Presentations

• Text box in the toolbar adds a box in the middle of the slide ("Type here") and starts typing.
• To type in an existing box, double-click it (the cursor goes where you clicked), or select it and press Enter or F2. Esc, or a click outside, stops typing. When you stop typing, a box that is too short grows taller to fit its text.
• While typing, the toolbar changes the selected text; with a box selected but not being typed in, it changes all of the box's text:
  • Smaller text / text size in points (6 to 300) / Bigger text; the buttons step through 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48, 54, 60, 72, 88, 96 and 120. While typing with nothing selected, the size applies to the whole box.
  • Bold, Italic, Underline (Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U work while typing).
  • Text color: the theme's title, text and accent colors first, then a palette, Other color…, and The theme's color to go back.
  • Align left, Center, Align right.
  • Bullets and Numbering (Tab in a list indents an item while typing).
• A box is a title or body box: titles use the theme's title font and color, the rest its body font and text color. There is no font menu: fonts come from the theme (or from the opened file).
• There is no strikethrough button; strikethrough in an opened file is kept. While typing, Ctrl+Shift+S turns strikethrough on or off for the selected text and also opens Save as.
• Fill colors a box's background (No fill removes it).

#Pictures and shapes in Presentations

• Picture in the toolbar opens a file picker for PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and SVG. A picture file dragged from File Explorer onto the slide, or a picture pasted with Ctrl+V (when not typing), is added too. New pictures are centered, and made smaller when they are wider than about 70% or taller than about 78% of the slide.
• Shape: Rectangle, Rounded rectangle, Circle, Triangle, Arrow (pointing right) and Line. A new shape is centered and filled with the theme's accent color; a new line is drawn in the theme's title color.
• Fill sets a shape's color (the theme's accent, soft and title colors come first; No fill for none). Outline sets a shape's outline color (No outline for none). Outline thickness cannot be changed.
• Shapes cannot hold text; put a text box on top. Pictures cannot be cropped, rotated or given borders or effects. To replace a picture, delete it and add the new one.

#Moving, resizing, lining up and arranging in Presentations

• Select: click an element; Shift+click or Ctrl+click adds or removes one; drag across an empty part of the slide to select everything the box touches; Ctrl+A selects everything on the slide; Esc clears the selection.
• Move: drag. Guides appear and the element snaps when its edges or center line up with the slide's edges and center or with other elements. Hold Alt to move freely, Shift to move only straight across or up and down. The arrow keys nudge the selection by 1 pixel, with Shift by 10.
• Resize: drag one of the eight handles (a line has two ends). Dragging a picture's corner keeps its proportions (hold Shift to stretch it); for other elements, hold Shift on a corner to keep proportions.
• Arrange menu: Bring to front, Bring forward, Send backward, Send to back; under "Line them up" (several selected: to each other) or "On the slide" (one selected: to the slide): Left, Center, Right, Top, Middle, Bottom; Duplicate (Ctrl+D) and Delete (Delete key).
• Copy and paste: Ctrl+C ("Copied 1 item." or "Copied 3 items."), Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V (the copy lands a little lower and to the right, on the slide you are on, so elements can be copied between slides). This works inside Presentations only: elements cannot be pasted into other programs, and only pictures can be pasted from them. Once elements were copied or cut in Presentations, Ctrl+V pastes those elements, not a picture copied in another program: drag the picture in or use Picture instead.
• Elements cannot be rotated or grouped.

#Themes and backgrounds in Presentations

Design (right of the toolbar) has:

• Theme: Paper, Ink, Ocean, Sunrise, Mint, Violet and Classic, and "From the file" for a deck that was opened from a .pptx. A theme sets the background, the title and text colors, an accent and a soft color for shapes, and the title and body fonts (Segoe UI; Georgia titles in Sunrise; Georgia throughout in Classic). It applies to every slide. The command search has Theme: Paper and the rest. Choosing another theme for an opened deck removes "From the file" from the list (Undo brings it back).
• This slide's background: a color for the slide you are on only; The theme's background goes back to the theme's.

Shapes filled with the theme's accent or soft color, and text without its own color, change color when the theme changes.

#Speaker notes in Presentations

The box under the slide ("Speaker notes: what to say on this slide (only you see them)") holds plain text notes for each slide. They are saved in the .pptx (PowerPoint shows them in its notes pane) and read from opened files. They are not shown while presenting, and they are not in the PDF.

#Presenting full screen in Presentations

• F5 presents from the first slide, Shift+F5 from the slide you are on. The Present button ("Present (F5 from the start)") also starts from the slide you are on, as do Present from here (right-click a slide) and the command search's Present from this slide.
• The slides fill the screen the Octoolo window is on, black around them. A bar shows for a moment at the start and when the mouse moves: "1 / 12 · arrows to move · B for black · Esc to stop".
• Next: Right or Down arrow, Page Down, Space, Enter, n, or a click. Previous: Left or Up arrow, Page Up, Backspace, p, or a right-click. Home and End: first and last slide. Presentation clickers that send Page Down and Page Up (or the arrows) work.
• B or . (period) blacks out the screen; press it again to bring the slide back.
• After the last slide: "End of the slideshow. Click or press Esc to go back." Esc ends the show at any time and returns to the editor on the slide you stopped at.
• Animations and transitions do not play; each slide appears at once.
• There is no presenter view: notes, a timer and the next slide are not shown on a second screen, and the show cannot be sent to a different monitor from the one Octoolo's window is on (move the window there first). No pen or laser pointer, no automatic timings or loop, no video or sound.

#Saving in Presentations: Save and Save as

• Save (Ctrl+S) saves the presentation as .pptx. A presentation that came from a .pptx is saved over it. A new presentation, a template and a file dropped onto the start screen are saved as a new file: Windows' Save dialog asks where.
• The arrow next to Save ("More ways to save") has Save as PowerPoint presentation… (Ctrl+Shift+S: a new .pptx; the presentation continues in the new file), Save as PDF… (Ctrl+P) and Show in folder (once it has a file).
• After a save a message says "Saved <name>" or "Saved a copy as <name>". A save is written to a temporary file first and then put in place of the old one.
• Open (Ctrl+O) and the back arrow ("Back to the start") ask "Save your changes to <name>?" ("Your changes are lost if you don't save them.") with Cancel, Don't save and Save when there are unsaved changes.
• Text still being typed in a box is included in the save.

#Save as PDF and printing in Presentations

Save as PDF… (Ctrl+P) makes a PDF and asks for a name and a folder:

• One page per slide, each page 13.333 × 7.5 inches (16:9), with no margins, the slides exactly as they look in the editor.
• Speaker notes and the grey hints of empty boxes are not included. There is no handout layout (several slides per page) and no notes pages.
• No printer dialog: Octoolo makes the PDF itself with WebView2's built-in PDF printer. After five minutes it gives up with "The page took too long to print."

There is no Print button for a paper printer: save a PDF and print it from a PDF reader. To turn slides into pictures (PNG or JPG, one per slide), or many decks into PDFs at once, use Converters' presentation conversion (Converters).

#Files Presentations opens and saves

Octoolo sets no size limit; decks with many large pictures take longer to open and save.

#What Presentations keeps and loses when it opens a PowerPoint file

Kept:

• Every slide in order (hidden slides too, shown like the others), and each slide's background color.
• Titles, subtitles and text boxes, in their places; text in placeholders takes its position from the slide's layout or master when the slide does not say.
• Paragraphs with their alignment (left, center, right, justified), bullets and numbering, line breaks, and each run's bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, color, size and font; the box's vertical alignment (top, middle, bottom).
• Pictures in PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, WebP and SVG, at their place and size; pictures inside groups.
• Rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, triangles, arrows and straight lines, with their fill color and outline; shapes inside groups. Text inside a shape is kept as a text box on top of it.
• The theme's colors and heading and body fonts (as the theme "From the file"), and theme color shades.
• Speaker notes, as plain text.
• 4:3 and other slide sizes are scaled to fit the 16:9 slide, centered, with empty space at the sides; they are saved that way.

Named in a message as the deck opens ("Octoolo could not keep this presentation's ..."), and asked about before saving over the original:

• tables
• charts
• SmartArt
• embedded objects
• video and sound (a video's preview picture stays as a still picture)
• animations
• transitions
• pictures in older formats (EMF, WMF and other formats a web page cannot show)
• "some shapes (drawn as rectangles)": PowerPoint's other ready-made shapes (stars, callouts, hearts, chevrons...). In 0.8.0 these shapes are left off the slide; any text in them is kept. Freeform drawings (shapes drawn point by point) become rectangles, without a message.

Changed without a message:

• Slide numbers, dates and footers set on the master are left out.
• Pictures, shapes and text placed on the slide master or a layout (for example a logo or a colored bar on every slide) are left out.
• Every kind of arrow (left, up, down, curved...) becomes a right-pointing arrow. Connectors that bend are treated like the other unknown shapes.
• Gradient, picture and pattern backgrounds become a plain color (the layout's, the master's or the theme's background color); gradient fills in shapes become their first color.
• Rotation, flipping, cropping, transparency, shadows, glows, 3-D and other effects; dashed lines.
• Line spacing, indents and paragraph spacing; text autofit; several bullet levels become one level; custom bullet characters become ordinary bullets.
• Links (the text stays), highlighting, superscript and subscript, WordArt effects.
• Comments, sections, slide masters and layouts as such (only the positions they give are used), and the text formatting of speaker notes.
• Fonts are kept by name. A font that is not installed on the PC is replaced on screen and in PDFs by another, but the saved .pptx keeps its name.

Password-protected (encrypted) .pptx files cannot be opened; Presentations says "This is not a PowerPoint presentation (.pptx). Older .ppt files need to be saved as .pptx in PowerPoint first." Remove the password in PowerPoint first.

#What PowerPoint sees in a .pptx saved by Presentations

A .pptx saved by Presentations is a standard PowerPoint file for PowerPoint and other programs that open .pptx. It has:

• Widescreen 16:9 slides (13.333 × 7.5 in) in order, each with its background color.
• Text boxes at their places with their paragraphs, alignment, bullets and numbering (with their levels), each run's bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, color, size and font, the box's fill and vertical alignment. Titles and body text get the theme's fonts and colors written into them. Empty text boxes are not saved.
• Pictures, and shapes (rectangle, rounded rectangle, oval, triangle, right arrow, line) with their fill and outline.
• Speaker notes.

The text boxes are ordinary text boxes, not PowerPoint placeholders, and the file's PowerPoint theme is the standard one: the Octoolo theme's colors and fonts are written into the slides, so PowerPoint's Design tab and slide master do not show it.

#The command search in Presentations

What do you want to do? in the title bar (or Ctrl+/, Alt+Q or F1) searches every command: Present from the start, Present from this slide, New slide, New slide: Title and the other layouts, Duplicate this slide, Delete this slide, Insert a text box, Insert a picture, Insert a shape: Rectangle and the other shapes, Theme: Paper and the other themes, Undo, Redo and the file commands. Arrow keys and Enter run one; Esc closes.

#Keyboard shortcuts in Presentations

While editing:

While presenting:

#Where Presentations keeps things

• Your presentations: only where you save them.
• Recent files: one list shared by Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations and Octoolo's other editors that have one (the Photo Editor, the Vector Editor, Text Studio), in %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.octoolo.app\recent-files.json, up to 30 files in all, PDFs saved with Save as PDF… included (each app shows only its own types). It stores paths and names, not the files.
• Drafts: the unsaved state of the open presentation (pictures included), in the storage of Octoolo's window (WebView2), in the EBWebView folder of %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.octoolo.app. One draft for Presentations at a time.
• PDFs being made: a few seconds in %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.octoolo.app\print, then deleted.
• While saving: a hidden temporary file .<file name>.octoolo-saving next to the file.
• Uninstalling Octoolo keeps the recent list and drafts unless "Delete the application data" is ticked in the uninstaller. Saved presentations are never touched.

#Drafts and recovery in Presentations

Presentations does not save the file by itself: the .pptx changes only when you press Save. Two seconds after a change it keeps a draft of the open presentation on the PC. After a crash, a restart or leaving without saving, the start screen shows Continue where you left off with the file's name, when it changed and "not saved"; Continue opens it with the changes, then press Save. Discard throws it away.

• The draft is deleted when you save, choose Don't save, or leave a presentation with no unsaved changes. Only one draft is kept: changing another presentation replaces it, and opening or starting another presentation instead of pressing Continue, then going back to the start screen without changing it, also deletes the earlier draft. Press Continue and save first.
• Changes from the last two seconds before a crash may be missing.
• Leaving Presentations other than with its back arrow (for example going to Settings with Ctrl+,, the home screen or Help and feedback) does not ask "Save your changes?", but the draft is kept.
• A presentation continued from a draft is saved over its file without the "Replace the original" question, even when the file lost parts (such as tables) when it was first opened. Use Save as PowerPoint presentation… to keep the original whole.
• There is no version history.

#Downloads it needs

None. Presentations is part of the app and needs no extra download.

#Privacy

Presentations works on the PC. Presentations, their names, pictures and notes never leave the computer. If "Send anonymous usage statistics" is on in Settings, Octoolo notes that Presentations was opened, for how long, that a file was saved, and error messages with file names and paths taken out, never the file or its contents. See Privacy and data.

#Troubleshooting

#"Older .ppt files need to be saved as .pptx in PowerPoint first."

Presentations opens .pptx only. Open the .ppt in PowerPoint and use File > Save As > PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx), or ask the sender for a .pptx. The longer message "This is not a PowerPoint presentation (.pptx). Older .ppt files need to be saved as .pptx in PowerPoint first." means the file is not a real .pptx: an old .ppt renamed, a password-protected (encrypted) file, or a damaged file. The short message also appears for other files dropped on the start screen (.odp, .key, .ppsx).

#"This PowerPoint file has no slides that Octoolo can read."

The file is a ZIP package but not a PowerPoint presentation inside, or it is damaged. Open it in the program that made it and save it as .pptx again.

#"Octoolo could not keep this presentation's ..." when a deck opens

The deck has tables, charts, SmartArt, embedded objects, video or sound, animations, transitions, old-format pictures or unusual shapes. The rest is there. To keep a table or chart, rebuild it with text boxes and shapes, or insert a picture of it. When saving, choose Save as a new file to keep the original whole, or Replace the original if those parts are no longer needed.

#Some shapes are missing although the message says "drawn as rectangles"

In 0.8.0 PowerPoint's ready-made shapes other than rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, triangles, arrows and lines (stars, callouts and the like) are left off the slide; their text is kept. Add a similar shape from Shape, or keep editing that deck in PowerPoint.

#The slides look different from PowerPoint

Fonts not installed on the PC are replaced on screen, and gradient or picture backgrounds, rotated elements, effects and line spacing are simplified (see "What Presentations keeps and loses when it opens a PowerPoint file"). A 4:3 deck shows with empty space at the sides. The text and pictures are all there.

#My notes do not show while presenting

Presentations has no presenter view: speaker notes are only shown in the editor, under the slide. Keep them on paper or on another device while presenting.

#Animations or transitions do not play

Presentations does not play animations or transitions, and does not keep them when saving.

#The slideshow opened on the wrong screen

The show fills the screen the Octoolo window is on. Press Esc, move the Octoolo window to the other screen (or projector), and start the show again.

#Saving fails: "is open in another program" or "is read-only"

• "<name> is open in another program. Close it there, or use Save as." PowerPoint keeps the file locked while it is open. Close it there, or use Save as PowerPoint presentation….
• "<name> is read-only. Turn that off in its Properties, or use Save as." Untick Read-only in the file's Properties, or save under another name.
• "Could not save <path>: ..." Windows refused (no permission, disk full, network drive gone): save somewhere else with Save as PowerPoint presentation….
• "Use Save as to choose where to save." Use Save as PowerPoint presentation….

#A picture does not go in

Nothing happens when the picture is chosen, pasted or dropped: the file is not a picture the app can show, or it is damaged. Presentations takes PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and SVG. Save other pictures (such as HEIC or TIFF) as PNG or JPEG in another program first. If Ctrl+V pastes earlier copied elements instead of the picture, drag the picture onto the slide or use Picture.

#A recent file does not open: "That file is no longer there: it was moved or deleted."

Open it from its new place with Open a file. "Open that file with the Open button first." means the same.

#I closed Octoolo without saving

Open Presentations again and press Continue under Continue where you left off, then Save. Without that line, the changes cannot be recovered.

#Limits and what Presentations cannot do

• It cannot open .ppt, .pptm, .potx, .ppsx, .odp or .key files, or password-protected .pptx.
• It has no tables, charts, SmartArt, video, sound, animations or transitions, and does not keep them from opened files.
• It cannot rotate, crop, group or flip elements, put text inside shapes, add links, or choose fonts (fonts come from the theme).
• Slides are 16:9 only; 4:3 and custom sizes cannot be made.
• It cannot change a slide's layout after the slide is made, or edit slide masters.
• No presenter view, second-screen output, pen, laser pointer, rehearsed timings, automatic advance or loop.
• No paper printing, handouts or notes pages; PDFs show one slide per page.
• No export of slides as pictures or video from Presentations itself (Converters makes pictures of slides).
• No collaboration: one person edits a file on one PC; no sharing, live co-editing, comments, cloud storage or sync. Octoolo Cloud is the subscription's name, not online storage.
• No version history; only the last unsaved draft is kept. One presentation open at a time.