How to Play PowerPoint Presentations on an iPad?

There are times when you’ll want to give a presentation but it’s not possible to have your MacBook with you. In these situations, an iPad is ideal; it’s small enough to carry around and whip out for an impromptu presentation.



Obviously, in order to do that, you’ll need to get your presentation onto the iPad. 
But, with no standard Office for iOS available (although Office Mobile lets you access PowerPoint presentations through the subscription-only Office 365), you’ll have to try other routes. Which one suits you will depend on which iPad apps you have and whether you want to control the presentation or let it run automatically. If it’s the latter, then the simplest solution is to export the presentation from PowerPoint on your Mac as a movie and transfer it to your iPad using iTunes.





If you want more control over the presentation, you could import it to the Apple’s Keynote app on the iPad and run it from there.



Finally, if you haven’t got Keynote but do have QuickOffice Pro on your iPad, you can do the same thing and run the presentation from QuickOffice. We’ll show you how to do each of these and make your presentation iPad-friendly as you need it to be.



What you need:
OS X 10.5.8 or later
Office for Mac 2014
Keynote for iPad (optional)
QuickOffice Pro (optional)



1. Export as Movie:
In PowerPoint, go to File>Save as Movie. Name your presentation and choose where to save it. Click on Movie Options and set the resolution to match your iPad – either 1024×768 or 2048×1536, depending on your iPad. Leave the other settings at their default.



2. Covert to MPEG-4:
Your exported movie is a MOV QuickTime file; you’ll need to convert it for iPad. Download Handbrake from http://handbrake.fr. Launch it, select your movie, and click Toggle presets in the menu bar, the click iPad in the device list. Leave everything else at default and click Start.



3. Transfer to iPad:
Drag the file output by Handbrake onto the iTunes Library. Now, sync your iPad with your Mac (via USB or Wi-Fi). If iTunes is set to manage Movies manually, tick the box next to your presentation to copy it to your iPad. Play it using the iPad’s videos app.



4. Transfer file to Keynote:
Connect the iPad to your Mac, if you don’t sync wirelessly. Open iTunes on the Mac, and under Devices, click iPad, Click Apps and scroll to File Sharing. Click on Keynote, then navigate in the Finder to your PPT file; drag it to the window under Keynote Documents.



5. Open in Keynote:
Launch Keynote on the iPad and click on the plus sign at the top left. This enables presentations to be imported to Keynote. Tap Copy from iTunes in the drop-down menu. Now, tap the presentation to import and open it in Keynote. It’ll take a few seconds.



6. QuickOffice Pro:
QuickOffice Pro allows you to edit Office files as well as view them, but not Office 2011 format files, so you’ll need to save a copy of the presentation in PowerPoint 1997-2004 format. In PowerPoint go to File>Save As… and choose PowerPoint 1997-2004.



7. Copy to QuickOffice Pro:

Connect the iPad to the Mac, if you don’t sync wirelessly. Open iTunes on your Mac and, under Devices, click iPad, Click Apps and scroll to File Sharing. Click QuickOffice Pro, then navigate in Finder to the PPT file and drag it to the window under QuickOffice Pro Documents.



8. Open Presentation:
Launch QuickOffice Pro on your iPad and tap your presentation. The player is basic and doesn’t support video output, but you can still mirror it to an Apple TV. You need to tap a slide to move to the next and you’ll lose transitions, but you can make basic changes to slides.