Converting a PowerPoint presentation into a course
Most organisations already have training in PowerPoint. Importing a deck turns it into a draft course in the builder, with the slides rebuilt as editable pages — text you can change, images and tables kept — rather than a set of pictures nobody can maintain.
Importing a deck
Section titled “Importing a deck”- Choose Library at the top of the page, then Courses.
- Choose Import, then PowerPoint presentation.
- Add one or more decks. Each one becomes its own draft course.
- Choose to import.
Accepted file types are .pptx, .pptm and .ppt, and you can upload a .zip of several at once. The size limit is 200MB per deck unless your account has been set differently.
Working in Google Slides? In Drive, select the folder and choose Download, which converts the files to PowerPoint on the way out.
Screenshot missingdeck-import-modal
The PowerPoint import window with two decks added to the list, the accepted file types and size limit visible in the instructions.
Expected at src/assets/screenshots/guides/convert-a-powerpoint-into-a-course/deck-import-modal.png
What happens while decks convert
Section titled “What happens while decks convert”Conversion runs in the background and the window tells you how many are done. You can close it and come back — each deck shows Converting, then the number of slides and modules it produced, with Open draft to go straight to it.
Each deck becomes a draft course. Nothing is published, and nothing is assigned to anybody until you do it yourself.
If the first slide looks like a title slide it becomes the course cover rather than its first page, which is usually what you want and is easy to undo in the builder.
Reading the “Worth checking” list
Section titled “Reading the “Worth checking” list”A converted deck lists anything the conversion could not carry across cleanly, slide by slide. It is worth reading once per deck, because the course is publishable without it and these are the things that will look wrong to a learner.
The messages you are most likely to see:
| What it says | What to do |
|---|---|
| The slide was imported as a picture because its images overlap too freely to rebuild | Rebuild that page by hand if the text needs to be editable or searchable |
| A table had merged cells, so only its text was kept | Rebuild the table in the builder if the layout carried meaning |
| Some fonts or sizes were changed to the closest the builder supports | Usually nothing — check the page looks right |
| Some images have no alternative text | Add it, so the course works with a screen reader |
| Speaker notes were imported as text | Remove them if they were only ever prompts for the presenter |
| An image or video was too large and was skipped | Add it again from the media library, or use a smaller version |
A deck that fails entirely says so and imports nothing rather than producing half a course. Uploading it again is the first thing to try.
Skills on a converted course
Section titled “Skills on a converted course”A converted deck is tagged with the skills its content develops, using skills you already have wherever one means the same thing and creating one only where nothing does. Because a deck states no level, a skill with a scale is set to the middle of it — check that on the Skills tab and adjust it, since only you know how far the material really takes somebody.
See Tagging a course with skills.
What to do with the draft
Section titled “What to do with the draft”Treat the import as a starting position rather than a finished course. A deck written to be presented aloud usually needs work before it stands on its own:
- The slides carried by the presenter’s commentary are the ones that read as bullet points with no explanation
- Split long slides into pages, and cut the ones that only made sense in the room
- Add questions if you want to record that somebody understood it, rather than only that they opened it
Then publish it as you would any other course — see Publishing a course and what review adds.
Common questions
Section titled “Common questions”Why is one slide a picture instead of editable text?
Section titled “Why is one slide a picture instead of editable text?”Its elements overlapped in a way the course builder cannot reproduce, so the conversion kept a picture of the slide rather than rearranging your design. The “Worth checking” list names the slide, and you can rebuild that page by hand.
Can I import a deck into an existing course?
Section titled “Can I import a deck into an existing course?”No. Each deck becomes its own new draft course. Copy the pages you want into another course in the builder if that is what you need.
What happened to my slide backgrounds?
Section titled “What happened to my slide backgrounds?”A background that came from the deck’s template is brought in as the page background, and the text on it stays editable.
Why did a link stop working?
Section titled “Why did a link stop working?”It pointed at a slide that was not imported, so only the link text was kept. Links to web pages are unaffected and open in a new tab.