With Adobe Acrobat Pro XI, we can easily convert PDF to PowerPoint so that we can continue working on the slides or cherry pick the good parts for a new presentation we are creating. By using Adobe Acrobat Pro XI, we can export includes text, tables, objects, and even master layouts.
Editor Will Kelly shows us the step details. He is using a pre-release version of Adobe Acrobat Pro XI and PowerPoint 2010 but the steps also work with the final shipping version of Acrobat Pro XI and any version of PowerPoint that supports the *.pptx format.
Steps to convert a PDF to PowerPoint:
1. Open Adobe Acrobat XI Pro. The main window appears.
2. Open the presentation PDF that you want to convert to PowerPoint.
3. Click button "Tools". The Tools menu opens in the sidebar.
4. Click Content Editing. The Content Editing sub-menu appears (Figure A)
Editor Will Kelly shows us the step details. He is using a pre-release version of Adobe Acrobat Pro XI and PowerPoint 2010 but the steps also work with the final shipping version of Acrobat Pro XI and any version of PowerPoint that supports the *.pptx format.
Steps to convert a PDF to PowerPoint:
1. Open Adobe Acrobat XI Pro. The main window appears.
2. Open the presentation PDF that you want to convert to PowerPoint.
3. Click button "Tools". The Tools menu opens in the sidebar.
4. Click Content Editing. The Content Editing sub-menu appears (Figure A)
5. Click Export File to….
6. Optionally, select just the slides you want to export to PowerPoint otherwise you’ll be exporting the entire slide deck.
7. Click Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation. The "Save As dialog" box appears similar to Figure B.
6. Optionally, select just the slides you want to export to PowerPoint otherwise you’ll be exporting the entire slide deck.
7. Click Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation. The "Save As dialog" box appears similar to Figure B.
8. Optionally, click Settings. The PPTX Settings dialog box (Figure C) opens. These settings control the finer aspects of the PDF to PowerPoint export. Perform one of the following options to change your settings:
a. Select Include Comments to ensure that any comments that were annotated in the PDF document carry over to the new PowerPoint file. This feature is selected by default.
b. Select Run OCR if Needed. You can also select a language for the OCR settings. This feature is selected by default.
c. Click OK or Restore Defaults.
a. Select Include Comments to ensure that any comments that were annotated in the PDF document carry over to the new PowerPoint file. This feature is selected by default.
b. Select Run OCR if Needed. You can also select a language for the OCR settings. This feature is selected by default.
c. Click OK or Restore Defaults.
9. Choose a location where you want to save the Exported PowerPoint file. Click Save. You can see the progress of the export process on the screen.
Work with exported PowerPoint file
The new export process for PowerPoint in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI produces a fully editable PowerPoint (*.pptx) file. It preserves many of the vector images, PowerPoint objects, and font choices from the original presentation before it was converted into a PDF document.
Will Kelly's experience running the PDF to PowerPoint conversion was largely positive. However, that doesn’t mean that it might not choke exporting more complex PowerPoint presentations or cause some age-old PowerPoint bad practices to come back and haunt you once you have an exported presentation. So he keeped his expectations reasonable on the overall export process.
Here is his recommended approach for working with newly exported PowerPoint files:
1. Open the PowerPoint export in PowerPoint. Figure D shows the exported PowerPoint file ready for editing and the PDF annotations now appear as editable speaker notes, which you can delete or edit, depending on your next presentation
Work with exported PowerPoint file
The new export process for PowerPoint in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI produces a fully editable PowerPoint (*.pptx) file. It preserves many of the vector images, PowerPoint objects, and font choices from the original presentation before it was converted into a PDF document.
Will Kelly's experience running the PDF to PowerPoint conversion was largely positive. However, that doesn’t mean that it might not choke exporting more complex PowerPoint presentations or cause some age-old PowerPoint bad practices to come back and haunt you once you have an exported presentation. So he keeped his expectations reasonable on the overall export process.
Here is his recommended approach for working with newly exported PowerPoint files:
1. Open the PowerPoint export in PowerPoint. Figure D shows the exported PowerPoint file ready for editing and the PDF annotations now appear as editable speaker notes, which you can delete or edit, depending on your next presentation
2. Review the formatting and text of the exported slides to ensure that there are no issues with especially with images
and text formatting in the slides.
3. Perform one of the following options:
a. Copy out the slides you need from the exported slide deck into another presentation as needed.
b. Edit and revise the full presentation just as you would any PowerPoint presentation.
4. If your organization uses a standard PowerPoint slide template, and you intend to use the presentation as is, you want
to make that the final stop for the process by attaching the template to the presentation.
Copy and paste from a PDF into PowerPoint
If you are seeking a more quick and dirty method for getting content out of a PDF slide deck, open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI and then copy and paste the good parts into your PowerPoint presentation.
Power over your presentation archives
If you work a lot with PDFs and PowerPoint presentations, the capability to export from PDF to PowerPoint alone could be worth the cost of upgrading to Adobe Acrobat Pro or Standard XI. The one advancement I would like to see in this feature would be batch handling of the export but that is far from a showstopper considering the value that this export feature can bring by doing away with the age-old frustration of not being able to revise and reuse content from a PDF of a presentation.
and text formatting in the slides.
3. Perform one of the following options:
a. Copy out the slides you need from the exported slide deck into another presentation as needed.
b. Edit and revise the full presentation just as you would any PowerPoint presentation.
4. If your organization uses a standard PowerPoint slide template, and you intend to use the presentation as is, you want
to make that the final stop for the process by attaching the template to the presentation.
Copy and paste from a PDF into PowerPoint
If you are seeking a more quick and dirty method for getting content out of a PDF slide deck, open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro XI and then copy and paste the good parts into your PowerPoint presentation.
Power over your presentation archives
If you work a lot with PDFs and PowerPoint presentations, the capability to export from PDF to PowerPoint alone could be worth the cost of upgrading to Adobe Acrobat Pro or Standard XI. The one advancement I would like to see in this feature would be batch handling of the export but that is far from a showstopper considering the value that this export feature can bring by doing away with the age-old frustration of not being able to revise and reuse content from a PDF of a presentation.