While on the move, have you ever received an email with a Powerpoint attachment ? Did you have no other option but to check it on your iPhone? There are good chances that, the simple task of viewing the Powerpoint, must have turned into a nightmare for you. This generally happens on the iPhone and the iPod Touch, because the files are converted into HTML Webpages before being displayed. Apple has acknowledged this problem, and released a support document.
This is what Apple says about the issue:
Microsoft Office documents are converted to HTML before being displayed in Mail on iPhone and iPod touch, so they are governed by the same size limits as webpages viewed on iPhone and iPod touch. If a Microsoft Office document uses very large images or many medium-sized images, some of them may not be visible when the converted content is displayed.
To overcome the problem of Powerpoint files not being displayed properly on the iPhone, Apple suggests the following techniques:
1) Ask the sender to reduce the size of the images in the slides that didn’t render properly.
2) Ask the sender to convert the Powerpoint file to PDF and resend.
3) View the Powerpoint on your PC using MS Office or on MAC using Quick Look for Mac.
In my opinion, the second suggestion makes more sense. If the Powerpoint being sent to you contains 30+ slides with over 50 images, you wouldn’t want the sender to waste his/her time shrinking every image. The third suggestion in our case is pretty much ruled out as we are on the move (with just our iPhone).
Now that leaves us with the second option of asking the sender to convert the Powerpoint into PDF. This is quite a good workaround, but what if the sender has no idea of how to convert the document into PDF format. This is where the following tutorial will come in handy.
Tutorial: How to convert Powerpoint(and other office files) into a PDF.
Windows users:
1) Go to http://www.primopdf.com/ and click on the free download. (There are many PDF converters out there but most of them are shareware, whereas this one is a freeware)
2) Browse to the folder where you downloaded the file (Freeware_PrimoPDF.exe) and double click to install.
3) After installing it, open the Powerpoint file to be converted and select print option.
4) Under the Printer Name dropdown menu, you will find PrimoPDF. Choose that as the printer and select OK.
5) A new dialog box will open up and ask you to assign the destination folder, where you want to create the file as a PDF.
6) Done the file is now saved as PDF and ready to be sent to an iPhone :)
Mac Users:
Things are much simpler for Mac users, as they don’t have to download an external software.
1) Directly open the file.
2) Select File > Print.
3) You will find a PDF drop down button. Click on it and choose Save as PDF option.
4) Enter the filename and the desired destination.
5) Done! You have converted the file into PDF format and it’s ready to be sent to an iPhone :)
So next time, if you are on the move, and someone sends you an email with Powerpoint attachment, you can send them a request to convert it into a PDF and resend it to you. Inorder to help them achieve the task you can also send the link to this tutorial!
