Have you ever wanted to give someone a small snapshot of a presentation? Perhaps you have just a couple of slides you’d like to easily share. What if you could make a 30-second teaser slideshow for that purpose from a deck you’ve already created? Well, now you can! An easy way to engage your audience is to create and share a GIF of your existing PowerPoint. Once you learn how to do this, the possibilities are endless! You can create a quick snippet to share in a newsletter. You can post one on your blog, Facebook, Instagram, you name it! Let’s get into how this is done!
First things First
Of course, in order to convert your PowerPoint to a GIF, you first have to create one! Ensure you have all of your transitions, colors, text, and image sizing set before you create your GIF. You won’t be able to edit it once you’ve created it, so you want to work with your finished product. When you hide slides from your original deck, those hidden slides will not show up in the GIF you create. This can come in handy if you don’t want to mess with your original too much in order to create your GIF.
Want your audience to actually be able to read each word on the slide? If so, you’ll need to keep that in mind both while creating the slide (think font size and number of words) and while choosing your time intervals (keep each slide up longer if there is a lot to read). If the goal is just to get people excited about hopping on a call, webinar, meeting, etc., then don’t worry about legibility. Count on your colors, images and visuals to do the talking for you.
Step-by-Step Tutorial
Step 1- Prepare for Export
As stated previously, ensure everything on each slide you choose for your GIF is exactly how you want it. Be sure to hide any slides you don’t want in your final product. Once you’ve done so, you’re ready to export! Just choose File > Export from the drop-down menu.
Step 2- Select Animated GIF as Your File Type
Locate the file types at the bottom of the export window. Scroll down and select Animated GIF from the File Format drop-down menu.
Step 3- Choose Your Time Intervals
Once you choose Animated GIF as your file format, more options will appear. The system defaults to Medium image quality, but you can choose the quality that best suits your needs. Next, you can select how many seconds spent on each slide. This ranges from 1-1,000, but we strongly suggest somewhere in the 1-4 second range.
Quick Tip: If you have a lot of text on the slides and the reader to be able to digest everything, bump it up to about 4 or 5 seconds per slide. If you have between 3-5 words on each slide, you can choose 1 second for bite-sized fun!
Step 4- Click Export, and Wait for PowerPoint to Create your GIF
Don’t forget to select where you want to export your file. I chose my desktop for this demonstration. Saving may take anywhere from a couple of seconds to a few minutes depending on your computer’s speed, and the file size of your GIF. Once your file is ready, simply open it up and check it out!
Quick Tip: Your computer may default to viewing your GIF in “preview”. If so, then simply right-click on the image to bring up other options. We suggest a web browser like Google Chrome. You’ll be able to see how quickly the slides advance and decide whether to speed up, slow down, or swap out slides as you see fit.
Here’s a GIF we created from a few of our design process slides using the steps above. As you can see, we chose one-second time intervals because we just wanted to give you a quick sneak peek into how this could look for you! There’s no need to make a snapshot like this slow enough so viewers can read every word.
This easy PowerPoint feature can create lots of buzz and excitement about your deck. If you curate your GIF wisely, it can be quite impactful for waking up audiences and sparking intrigue. We hope you continue to have fun exploring different ways to use PowerPoint as a powerful tool to engage, empathize and energize. By anticipating the needs and wants of your viewers, you can speak their language–reaching more people than ever before. Need help? We’d love to walk you through any questions you may have when it comes to presenting. As always, happy presenting!
