How do I embed a PowerPoint presentation into a page?

[Heather Murski]

I have embedded a PowerPoint presentation into a page;  the images do not show up.  Rather it is an image of the PPT.  When I click it, it says that it's having trouble converting the file.  Then is says to click download. 

I want the PPT to embed and be navigable.

[Jonathan Smith · Accepted solution]

Hi @Heather Murski,

  When you drag the file onto a page, it will display as a link or a thumbnail (as you described).

Try this out: 

1. Edit your page and insert the Office Powerpoint macro
2. Edit the macro and point it to your embedded file.

 If that doesn't work, this should:

1. Place an attachments macro on your page
2. Add the ppt to the page
3. Place an Office Powerpoint macro on your page.
4. Point the Office Powerpoint macro to your current powerpoint

The second method allows you to point to a different powerpoint if you have weekly/monthly updates.

Jon

[Jonathan Smith]

Note: Animated gifs sadly won't work when  using the Office Powerpoint macro. If you want the animated gifs, you will have to download and open the file.

[Jared Brenner]

It's also worth noting that this macro only works with .ppt files, so be sure to avoid the default .pptx extension.

[Jonathan Smith]

@Jared Brenner

 Interesting! Didn't know about the lack of pptx. 

Thanks for sharing!

[Rob Horan]

I had no problem using this macro with PPTX files.

[Alexandra Bobrow (Instech)]

I have no problem using this macro with PPT or PPTX files, if I view it in confluence. When trying to view the same KB article in service desk, the presentation is just a small thumbnail of the first page and it cannot be clicked on at all. It seems there is no way to embed a ppt or pptx in confluence which customers can actual see in service desk, and that the only solution is to allow customers to download the file.

[Ian Turner]

When i do it I get a confluence page with a long window displaying the full set of slides - not an interactive powerpoint.  It looks a mess and is hard to work in other content and is slow as hell if its a large slidedeck - as in unusable.

I'd much rather it either just displayed the file attachment that I can choose to open or previewed it properly allowing me to page through slide by slide.

There are work arounds of a sort - I can copy the URL of the attachment and paste that in.. which is okay but not great.

[Lena Shchors]

the same happens to me and it looks that nothing changes for a year ((

[Danielle Lefebvre]

This is the same for me-anyone know what would fix this?

[Jaz Wilkinson]

This shouldn't be so hard - a major problem in large orgs is how much people use Powerpoint and these docs are never embedded to a Confluence page so no-one knows where they are. Should be as easy as embedded Miro or Figma. 

[Matt Brauer]

The "insert" button for the Powerpoint macro seems to do nothing, with either of the two methods described above.

I'm getting a little tired of the hacky feel to everything Confluence. Nothing ever seems to work as advertised, and there's always some kind of workaround that needs to be applied.

[Jonathan Smith]

@Matt Brauer As much as I love Confluence, it is article centric.

Not to push anyone to a different solution, but O365 would be file centric. 

I've been in Confluence for 4 years now and yes.. it does feel hacky. This is why the Atlassian Marketplace has so many options out there :)

[Jonathan Smith]

Don't get me started on the text editor. 

[Ian Turner]

I've been using confluence for a long time - hacky isn't the word I'd use.  I think that too often they've been lazy with fixing bugs and not added simple features to macros forcing people to go to the marketplace.  Whilst the marketplace may be good for some anyone who uses this at an enterprise level is likely to struggle with that option and I think having to buy another module because the thing I've bought has no functionality isn't a good customer experience.

To the point about office365 that's just a different beast - I do use confluence to create some documents, export them to word and deliver them to customers but my general use of confluence is to create simple information that is easy to read and link.  In my work, I'm an IT architect, I've grown tired of the "never mind the quality feel the width" attitude to document creation.  Confluence allows you to concentrate on simple documentation and avoid getting bogged down in templates with hundreds of styles that seem to proliferate over time.

[Shree Lekha Ramanathan]

Hi Heather ,

        I'm from Zoho Show and we'd like to introduce our add-on
Zoho Show for Confluence Cloud. You can now import , edit and manage all your powerpoint files in your confluence space , without switching between apps and user accounts.

We support pptx,ppt and ppsx file formats.

The presentations embedded in confluence pages are navigable with quick navigation controls and fullscreen view. 

We have rich set of options to transform your numbers to beautiful charts and infographics.

Here's our Atlassian Marketplace page . Install and give it a try :) 

Would love to hear more from you!

Thanks,
Lekha
show-confluence@zohoshow.com

[Jaz Wilkinson]

This is great but because we have 100's of thousands of users and Confluence does not allow selective pricing, we would not be able to use it. 

[Troy B. Stauffer]

if you have animations in your presentation, the macro doesn't work right.  It only shows slides.

[Rob Horan]

All the more reason to ban animations in presentations.

[Troy B. Stauffer]

Shame, Shame, Shame LOL

I spent a lot of time on those animations :)