powerpoint efficient elements alternative

Presentation Guru

The complete guide to the best powerpoint add-ins.

Maurizio La Cava makes presentations every day and makes extensive use of PowerPoint add-ins, so he has put together a list of what he considers to be the best ones, grouped for top functions and discusses them in detail below.

With millions of presentations delivered every day, PowerPoint has become a core tool for anybody who needs to present a project and persuade others to adopt their ideas. If you are a manager, a student or an entrepreneur, there is every chance that you’ve used PowerPoint at least once in the last few days.

PowerPoint is an easy and accessible tool within the Microsoft Office suite. However, PowerPoint users are struggling, and the amount of time wasted on presentations is growing faster than ever.

Creating a presentation takes a long time: you need to structure the story; you need to gather all information; and then the design process starts. You’ll need to visualize concepts on your slides; look for images or icons that are relevant to your message; and then you’ll have to work on the multiple formatting options that PowerPoint offers. This means that, as the bare minimum, you’ll probably have to fix alignments between objects, select a proper font, define a color palette, setup the slide master in PowerPoint , etc.

Those could be easy fixes if you are good with PowerPoint, but what if you are not? Manually creating the layout for slides can take a long time and, moreover, can be quite inaccurate. Imagine spending a lot of time on a presentation, only to produce ineffective slides. Not only will you have wasted your time, but you’ll be wasting the time of people who decided to come to your ineffective presentation, only to fall asleep during your speech.

There are some magic tools that can really improve the quality and the effort input in your presentations. We call these tools PowerPoint add-ins.

What is an add-in?

PowerPoint add-ins are simple and powerful tools that automate crucial parts of your job when working in PowerPoint. If you look on the web, you’ll find an infinite list of PowerPoint add-ins but, honestly, there are many that are not very useful. These are the ones that I think are worth a further look:

I believe these are the add-ins that can really improve the way you work and make you much faster and more accurate. In this article we will take a look at each of them in more detail.

MLC PowerPoint Addin

The MLC PowerPoint Addin includes 23 time-saving features to use with just 1 click, such as: swapping the positions of shapes, breaking a table into shapes, pasting an object onto all your slides, easily moving an object closer/further from another one, etc.

Swap Shapes

One key function of the MLC PowerPoint Addin is Swap Shapes.

Think for a moment – how would you swap 2 shapes in PowerPoint?

Let’s suppose you have 2 shapes (or pictures) and you want A to take the place of B or vice versa. You take A, you start moving it over B, you send A behind B, then you take B and you’ll probably realize you have lost the position of A. Now you undo (CTRL+Z) , you start again but this time you duplicate A in order to keep the initial position before you move it. Even though you can finally manage to swap the two positions it takes far too many steps for such a simple operation. PowerPoint doesn’t offer a straightforward solution.

However, with just one click, Swap Shapes allows you to swap the position of one object with another. In the following image, I have highlighted two icons that I want to swap.

Swap Shapes reverses the position of two objects, allowing you to preserve alignments and distributions. All you need to do is select the two shapes, then click the Swap Shapes button. Boom, result. Maximum efficiency in just a few seconds!

Make Same Size

The second key function of the MLC PowerPoint Addin, is Make Same Size. It can be very useful when you have many elements or photos and you want to make them all uniform.

With the usual CTRL+ click , you select the shapes, starting with the one whose size you want to copy:

Click on the Make same size  button. Magic! All the shapes have been resized, to match the size of the first one you selected.

Grid Shapes

However, at this point, I noticed that it would be necessary and natural to make another change: to rearrange the shapes in order and make them equidistant from one another.

As you can see, we have 8 elements that could be arranged in 2 rows and 4 columns, so, let’s select them all and click on Grid Shapes .

From here, we can decide the distance between one object and another. I chose 10 mm horizontally and 10 mm vertically:

Now click OK. Look how wonderful it is!

These functions can be applied to images as well. This function could be very useful, for example when making an image grid with your clients’ logos.

Make Same Color

Make Same Size recognizes whether you are trying to resize images or shapes and always delivers the result. There is a second button that works with the same logic but only on the colors. Make Same Color is an extremely simple-to-use function and, at the same time, it is one of the smartest buttons of the MLC PowerPoint Addin. It allows you to change the color of many objects at the same time.

For example, here is a slide with eight shapes in different colors and we want to make them consistent:

If you want to standardize the color of your shapes, the first thing to do is CTRL+click  the target color shape first followed by all the others. In this case, I clicked on the orange shape first:

Now, with just one click on  Make Same Color:

Same Height

One of the most-used functions is Same Height. To work you select both shapes but first select the shape that is the height you want and click on the button Same Height :

If you also need to set the width, just CTRL + click on the  dark blue shape for example, then on the other one. Now we have two identical shapes!

The functions above are the most-used ones of the MLC PowerPoint Addin, but let’s look at some of the most recently added functions.

The Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds automatically sets the guides in your PowerPoint on a specific, magic position. The Rule of Thirds is, in my opinion, the one golden rule that can revolutionize the appearance and impact of your slides. To find out more check out this guide on how to create an effective presentation in PowerPoint using  the Rule of Thirds .

The best slides are not only made up of elements that you can find on PowerPoint – often you need to go to the web to look for images, icons, vectors and other elements. Every time you leave PowerPoint to scout for a specific object you are wasting time and energy;  and you might end up with a low-quality object that will make your presentation look poor anyway.

This is why the MLC Assets function is useful: a multimedia library where you just need to click on an element, and you’ll get the best quality of it ready to be used on your slides. MLC Assets nowadays works with free, high resolution images. You can get millions of beautiful images for your slides with just one click. Here’s how.

First, click on MLC Assets:

Type in the box what you are looking for and MLC Assets will find you loads of free images you can choose from. For example, I searched Laptop:

Now I just need to click on the image I want and it will appear on the slide:

Thanks to MLC PowerPoint Addin you’ll be able to access millions of high quality images free from copyrights ready to be used on your slides.

You can get images from Pixabay.com and from Unsplash.com, just select the tab you like the most and proceed or search in both and compare the images to find the best fit for your slide.

It is very useful and smart, isn’t it?

Gantt Chart

A Gantt Chart is used across all industries and organizations in project management. However, it can be quite difficult and time-consuming to create and update a Gantt chart in PowerPoint.

This feature is one of the latest included in the MLC PowerPoint Addin. The aim is to create and update Gantt charts very quickly, without the need to import them from other programs. Moreover, this function is extra useful because once you have created a Gantt chart, every part of it becomes an object of PowerPoint so, anyone can edit it, including those people who do not have the MLC PowerPoint Addin.

When you click on the Gantt Chart button, you can see a lot of options to design your customized chart:

Clicking on the Task tab, you can insert your activities simply by writing the name and the duration of them. You can select the date with a click on the calendar or enter it by writing in the window, respecting the format:

At this point, click OK and the chart will be created:

Furthermore, if you have different categories of activities, you can group them in different colors or change the color of the time band.

At this point, you can also set the milestones that are used to show a specific moment in time, for example, when a delivery is expected:

Add as many milestones as you wish and then click on the OK button. You’ll notice that the milestones will be indicated by a rhombus on top of the time band and a dotted line will show where they intersect the tasks you’ve previously entered:

And the price?

The MLC PowerPoint Addin license includes 23 functions plus all the updates that are constantly released. The cost of the subscription is $US 57.77 a year, including support and the subscription to the official Lean Presentation Design community where you can contribute suggestions for new functions to be developed.

Consider how much time this addin will save you, then compare the value of the time saved against $US 57.77. How much is your time worth?

Flevy Tools

One of the things that wastes a lot of time at work is definitely creating charts. How do you solve the problem and save time? Flevy Tools is a PowerPoint add-in for creating business charts, commonly used by management consultants. Twelve types of diagrams are supported:

• Approach Diagrams
• Step Box Diagrams
• Harvey Ball Diagrams
• Gantt Diagrams
• Circular Diagrams
• Pyramid Diagrams
• Rating Charts
• Relationship Diagrams
• Segment Diagrams

Waterfall Charts

• Matrix Charts
• Value Chain Diagrams

Let me show you how easy it is to create a  Harvey Ball Diagram , for example. When generating a diagram, there is a popup where you can specify the attributes of the diagram (e.g. number of chevrons, number of categories, etc.).

Once generated, you can further customize the diagram, as the diagram is built using AutoShapes:

With this process, you can create all the graphs you want and make them usable for your business presentations.

Also worth noting, Flevy hosts a wealth of business frameworks. Business frameworks are in-depth business training guides—the same used by top global consulting firms when they deploy their consulting project teams to Fortune 500 companies.

They used to sell it for $199 but now they are giving this tool away for free for a limited time.

think-cell is the add-in for Microsoft Office if you need to create data-heavy presentations. It seamlessly integrates into PowerPoint and Excel to help you create complex charts and layouts, including Waterfall, Gantt and Marimekko charts, as well as process flows. More than 40 chart types are supported.

Developed in close cooperation with top consulting firms, the software saves you, on average, 70% of your time when working on charts and helps you to create high-quality output consistent with your corporate brand. It is very easy to use, and you will find yourself becoming a pro in just a few hours.

think-cell’s automated linking of charts and Excel data fosters consistency and correctness, and helps you save hours when updating your charts’ numbers. This is useful for FP&A teams that have to create and update recurring financial reports on a regular basis.

You will find the graphs in the Elements section: Pie charts, Waterfall charts and similar graphs have an associated data sheet (except for the Gantt chart) that appears by double-clicking the chart or by clicking the Open Datasheet button:

Inside the Excel box, you can work normally, modifying cells, adding rows and columns. You can also use formulas and shortcuts as though you’re working on a Excel worksheet. You can do all of this straight in PowerPoint, with no need to even think about Excel!

An interesting functionality of thinkcell is the Waterfall chart, which is used to show positive and negative changes to a value over a period of time. To create a Waterfall Chart, the first step is to go to the PowerPoint ribbon and click on Elements > Build-up Waterfall  icon. This places the chart onto your slide:

Now, a build-up waterfall is inserted.

Open the datasheet to add your values:

When your data is inserted, you will set an automatic sum of your chart by clicking on a cell and typing e :

How simple is that?

Another great advantage is that presentations created using think-cell are 100% compatible with PowerPoint. The think-cell elements appear as regular PowerPoint shapes, such as textboxes and chart objects. This means that coworkers and clients who do not have think-cell installed can still open and easily edit the files you share with them.

think-cell has a target group of medium-large companies, so the minimum number of licenses to purchase is equivalent to 5. At 45€ in total, this corresponds to 189€ per user. The cost includes all updates and technical assistance. They also have advantageous packages as the number of users increases.

Office Timeline

Do you need to create and manage an advanced Gantt chart in PowerPoint while skipping Excel? Then Office Timeline is the add-in you need.

Office Timeline was specifically developed to provide all the tools you need to design project charts like Gantt diagrams and timelines. Another feature is to load your Excel sheets on PowerPoint and continue to edit them directly from there.

Office Timeline leads you through a user-friendly graphic interface to input the data you need to be displayed, for example, milestones and tasks, and it takes care of visualizing them and recreating a timeline with the use of PowerPoint standard objects. Therefore, you can always edit the objects the same way you would edit a set of common shapes in PowerPoint.

Let’s look at the steps to create a timeline together. The first step is to go to Timeline section and click on New:

Choose the timeline style you prefer, according to your needs:

In this example, I chose Rounded style:

The most important part of creating a Gantt chart is when you start setting up your tasks or milestones:

You can insert the date and the duration of your tasks, as well as customize the color.

When everything is ready, just click on Create:

After few seconds, the timeline will appear:

How much does it cost?

There are two options: the free one and the paid one, which has many more features that increase the productivity of your business presentations. It costs $59 a year and includes all updates and technical assistance.

The Noun Project

The Noun Project is an add-in that aggregates icons and symbols. It is an online symbol library in vector format (SVG) issued with licenses that allow their reuse. An important strength of this project is that new icons are inserted by experts in the field, such as designers, every day.

The Noun Project also includes icons with a social theme, such as global warming and human rights.

To download the add-in, you just need to go to PowerPoint, click on Insert section and click on Get Add-ins Button:

Now search the list of add-ins. When you find it, click the  Add button.

Noun Project will now show on your PowerPoint ribbon:

There are more or less 100 free icons to use in SVG format:

Before you insert the image on the slide, Noun Project lets you choose the color of the icon and the gradient from its panel but, being SVG files you can always edit them afterwards:

Once it is inserted, you can use the icon to create professional presentations:

I created this timeline to show how easily you can use this add-in to craft wonderful slides, which will grab your audience’s attention:

There aren’t many steps to do this and the result will be very professional and effective.

What does it cost?

As I said before, Noun Project gives you 100 free icons, but to unlock the others – over 1 million, according to their website! – you need to pay just $39.99 per year.

You’re preparing one of your slideshows and you have very little time to condense all the information. The last thing you want to do is waste more time looking for the images you need.

Pexels is a very innovative and useful add-in. (But don’t just take my word for it – other contributors to Presentation Guru also recommend Pexels .) You can download it for free, in the same way as we downloaded Noun Project above, and then search for images directly from PowerPoint without having to search for them from the browser.

Write in the box what are you searching for, e.g. Laptop in my case. Click on your chosen image and it will be added to the slide automatically:

If you want, Pexels shows you different layouts to enrich your pictures. Flick among the different ones and examine the result:

At this point, I would like to remind readers that  sometimes, despite the message in your content being clear, that message can get lost when translated into your PowerPoint. To make really good presentations it is worthwhile studying some design basics to ensure that your message can be fully appreciated.

PowerPoint Labs

PowerPoint Labs is an add-in that will make it easier for you to deal with your business slides and make them more impactful.

Fit to Slide

The first feature I have selected for you, called Fit to Slide, is very interesting as it can resize an image with just one click. If you are uploading images and do not want to waste time on resizing the image to the slide, this is the perfect solution. You just need to upload the picture and go to the Resize section:

Click the highlighted button:

What do you think of this function? It is useful, isn’t it?

Crop to Slide

Have you ever wanted to insert only part of the image onto a slide and thought that to do that you needed to use other programs outside PowerPoint? With PowerPoint Labs it’s much simpler than you think. Let me show you. I have chosen this image but only want to set a part of the photo on the slide. The solution is to cut it out:

Firstly, overlay the chosen picture section exactly on the slide:

Click on Crop  > Crop to Slide  and the picture will be resized:

I think this will be interesting for those who care about making presentations with a more ‘professionally designed’ style. This function allows the user, once the reference color has been chosen, to outline the complementary color and the gradient:

In my opinion, the immediate choice of the gradient helps you a lot because in a few seconds, you can create an effective template to apply to the slides and boost your productivity.

How much will this Addin cost?

This is the best bit – it is free!

Power Mockup

Do you need to quickly design the mockup of a website to show the client what it will look like? Or maybe you need to design it to brief your developers?

Designing an entire mockup might require a lot of time, as every window has buttons, bars, labels and many other elements you would need to recreate and organize.

PowerMockup  is a PowerPoint add-in that helps you do just that! It is a prototyping toolkit for PowerPoint. It helps to create wireframes and mockups for websites as well as mobile and desktop applications. To build a prototype, simply select shapes and icons from the PowerMockup library and drag them into a PowerPoint slide. You can then use PowerPoint’s slideshow and animation features to make your prototype interactive.

PowerMockup enables a right sidebar, where you’ll find plenty of super useful web elements that you can search easily.

You just need to drag and drop in your slides.

The PowerMockup library is already quite extensive, but the PowerMockup team is continuously expanding it. You can help it to grow by adding your own shapes and building a custom library of commonly used shapes, which you can share with other users.

It depends on which license you need . There is a trial version available that you can use, but it limits the number of shapes you can use.

If you think PowerMockup is too specific, you might take a look at ShapeChef instead. ShapeChef is a graphic and chart library for PowerPoint that helps you organize your graphics, charts and other assets for easy reuse. The tool integrates a library pane into the PowerPoint window, from which items can be dragged and dropped into a slide:

Adding new items to the library is very simple: select a graphic on a slide and choose Add to ShapeChef  from the context menu:

If you are searching for professional PowerPoint graphics and charts for a presentation, ShapeChef can help you with that as well. You can download dozens of ready-to-use graphic collections directly from the ShapeChef server via the tool and add them to your library. Please note however that currently ShapeChef only works with PowerPoint for Windows.

Just as with PowerMockup there are a range of licenses on offer but overall it is less expensive than PowerMockup but also ensures you excellent results.

You can also read Farshad Iqbal’s earlier review of ShapeChef here .

I’ve outlined a selection of add-ins that I think can help you to make your presentations more effective. Each of them has its own peculiarities and its top functions.

There are functions that allow you to create graphs and edit them directly from PowerPoint, avoiding exporting them from Excel. There are some that help with design functions, such as making shapes the same color and size; cutting images and adapt them to the slide with a single click; choosing infinite icons from plugins and then customizing them. If you need to create wireframes and mockups for websites and for mobile applications, you now know how and which add-in to use.

I think these add-ins will make a huge difference to your presentations – and your workload. Do you know any other add-ins worth sharing? Let us know in the comments below sharing an accurate description to enrich the article even more.

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Maurizio La Cava

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• The Complete Guide to the Best PowerPoint Add-ins - 30th January 2019

21 Comments

14th February 2019 at 11:25 am

This comparison does not include all the add-ins on the market.

There are a few more, which needs to be added:

1. Efficient Elements, https://www.efficient-elements.com 2. Veodin, https://www.veodin.com 3. “Made in Office”, https://www.made-in-office.com/en/empower-slides/

Also it is important to mention that Think Cell and “Made in Office” offer a Mac Version. Veodin is currently working on a Mac version.

Could you please update the article.

Thanks, Robert

Rosie Hoyland

14th February 2019 at 3:49 pm

Thanks Robert for this update. The article never claimed to include all the add-ins on the market – that would be a very long post indeed! – but the 3 that you highlight are great additions to the list and we would encourage our readers to check them out.

14th February 2019 at 7:59 pm

Thanks Rosie. May I can suggest an article? The MAC market is growing every year. Companies like SAP, Salesforce, Allianz and even Accenture as one of the biggest consulting companies are using more and more MACs. MAC users will also using PowerPoint for MAC. Unfortunately MAC users are looking for the same tools and add-ins that Windows users are using with PowerPoint. Companies like Think-Cell, Videos and Made-in-Office know the need and are working on MAC versions or already have it in their portfolio. But it is hard to find an overview. Would it be possible to find have an article on this amazing page? Thanks Robert

15th February 2019 at 9:03 am

That’s a really good idea, Robert – are you the man to write it?

15th August 2019 at 7:53 am

Are you looking for writers?

20th August 2019 at 9:18 am

Always interested in writers who can share ideas that will help our readers better themselves as speakers, presenters or presentation designers. If you’re interested in writing, please contact me directly via our Contact Form

11th April 2019 at 2:45 pm

Hi Robert, You are correct. In this regard I want to add one more addin in this list. ‘DrawingBoard’ it has lots of functionalities with editable icons, shapes, infographics, wire-frames etc.

DrawingBoard

Free download: https://www.next2office.com/

Youtube Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfvKI1ao17fIW7DiR3EPAcw/videos

OLIVIA MODESTI

20th May 2019 at 4:06 pm

Yes I agree with you Robert and here the new one I found which is one of the best I think: https://addineo.com Cheers,

iSlide PowerPoint

24th January 2021 at 9:11 am

Robert, You are so right! Not complete at all, You bring in some good alternatives. but luckily I saw a post of the iSlide add-in as well here below. That is my personal favourite, maybe you should check that one out sometimes! https://islide-powerpoint.com/en/  

3rd October 2021 at 5:55 pm

Agree, this add-in is actually a mandatory installation after installing Office or WPS. This saves you so much time.. For the record, I’m using the Premium version, as I did not want to look at the free resources only..

7th July 2019 at 5:54 pm

You are missing the best PowerPoint add-in named iSlide! Try it for free 7 days, just sent a mail to [email protected] . Look at it here: https://secure.2checkout.com/affiliate.php?ACCOUNT=CHENGDUI&AFFILIATE=117061&PATH=https%3A%2F%2Fen.islide.cc%2Ftemplateldg-bo%3FAFFILIATE%3D117061 After testing get 20% OFF using the code: DISCOUNT.

20th January 2020 at 6:33 pm

Check out https://www.participoll.com/ which is an add-in turns PowerPoint into an audience interaction tool via polls inside your slides

21st January 2020 at 10:31 am

Good tip. We have! Check out https://www.presentation-guru.com/how-to-get-instant-feedback-from-your-audience/ for Farshad Iqbal’s review of it.

Office SuperChargers

6th February 2020 at 5:48 pm

you should also consider IDMB PowerPoint Supercharger which installs to your desktop. It delivers dozens of cool tools to speed up your work. https://www.officesupercharger.co.uk/software/powerpoint-supercharger It can automatically clean and tidy your presentation, sort out capitalisation, add TOCs, standardise formating of tables, pictures, kickers and much more. You can also get a free 30 day trial

Ben Oostdam

5th April 2020 at 11:55 am

I still think that the iSlide Powerpoint add-in is better, faster and more time saving. Please add this to your list! Even 95% of the features is free to use! Get it for free on: https://islide-powerpoint.com and just try it out! It really belongs in this list.

9th April 2020 at 11:48 am

Well you’ve sold it well! I guess we’ll need to take a look now!

18th April 2020 at 9:43 am

Hello, Maurizio and Rosie! Please do look at that iSlide add-in, it’s available for MAC and WPS users as well, in 8 different languages even. You have have a lot of readers, I think they can benefit from it! the iSlide Support Team

21st April 2020 at 4:06 pm

Sounds interesting – I’ll take a look

PHYLLIS m CAPP

22nd August 2020 at 4:36 pm

PowerPointLabs is only available through the 2016 version. I have a 2019 program Can I still use it??

17th September 2020 at 12:38 pm

Hi Phyllis We asked PowerPointLabs directly and they have confirmed that YES – you can use their add-in with Office 2019. There’ll be no stopping you now! Good luck.

Silvia van de Berg

26th August 2020 at 8:00 pm

Hi, nice article, our compliments! We would like you to take a minute to look at our free iSlide PowerPoint add-in. https://islide-powerpoint.com/en/support/tips-ideas/15-minutes-en This is an add-in that everybody should use, because of it’s libraries, scrollbars and other features that should always been in PowerPoint. It only needs registration of an email account to get started. In 9 major languages and for Windows and MacOS! Please take a look at our website and contact me if you have any questions that I can help you with. Regards, Silvia van de Berg

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A Comprehensive Guide to PowerPoint Add-ins

Why should you care about powerpoint.

Since its 1990 debut, PowerPoint has firmly established itself as the go-to presentation tool for business professionals worldwide, boasting over 1 billion installations and a 95% market share.

As a business strategy consultant, I rely heavily on PowerPoint. It's the go-to medium to convey complex client deliverables succinctly and visually. No matter the number of presentations under my belt, producing an engaging slide deck within tight deadlines is always a challenge.

It's not just consultants who sink hours into PowerPoint. A study by Nielson and Empower Corporation revealed that computer-centric employees spend about seven hours weekly on PowerPoint presentations, with over a third of this time on slide formatting. This highlights a vast opportunity for productivity gains, and that's where PowerPoint add-ins come into play.

What is a PowerPoint add-in?

Despite Microsoft's Office suite undergoing an upgrade every three years or so, PowerPoint's evolution appears to have hit a plateau. The infrequent introduction of new tools and features is insufficient to meet the demands of its evolving user base. This has paved the way for third-party developers to cater to these unmet needs by creating add-ins that add functionality to PowerPoint.

PowerPoint, for all its merits, has drawbacks. Ever tried aligning objects across slides? It can be maddening. Add-ins alleviate these issues, enhancing PowerPoint with added functions, all while building on its foundational capabilities.

Types of PowerPoint add-ins

• Proprietary Add-Ins: Many consulting firms have proprietary PowerPoint add-ins (e.g., Deloitte’s PowerPoint Tools, Accenture QPT Tools, Bain Toolbox for PowerPoint, McKinsey's Marvin Tools for PowerPoint, EY SlideFox, PWC Smart Toolbar, Strategy& Toolbar, etc.). These are generally only accessible by employees of these firms, and therefore won’t be covered in this guide.
• Premium Add-Ins: There is a wide variety of premium add-ins, ranging from pricey options to more affordable ones. Many of these add-ins are created by ex-consultants looking to replicate the functionality of their firm's proprietary add-ins once they no longer work there. The issue with a lot of these add-ins is that they can be quite pricey, with some costing over $250USD per year. Fortunately, there are a few gems that offer all the functionality you need for a reasonable one-time fee.
• Free Add-Ins: While the allure of free add-ins is undeniable, they often come with their set of limitations. Sometimes, they lack comprehensive features, have less frequent updates, or may not offer dedicated support. If a developer decides to abandon a free add-in, which happens more often than you'd expect given the limited incentive to keep supporting it, it could potentially ruin the workflow you've gotten used to - a pitfall I've regrettably experienced firsthand. Although I don't personally use free add-ins, I've included a database of the best ones that I've tried at the end of this article for your reference as they are still an excellent option for people who don't spend their days in PowerPoint.

Which PowerPoint add-ins should you use?

I've dedicated considerable effort to identify tools that could enhance my efficiency. After extensive research and testing, I’ve landed on two “essential” add-ins that I personally use in my day-to-day work: PowerTools and Think-Cell .

These add-ins collectively fill the gaps in PowerPoint's native functions, speeding up routine or tedious tasks. Even though I aimed for a minimalistic add-in suite, each one brings something unique to the table, so choosing just one ultimate add-in proved elusive.

Although both of my top add-in recommendations, PowerTools and Think-Cell, fall into the premium category, cost was an important factor in my choices. PowerTools offers a one-time payment for lifetime access, a bargain considering the value it adds to my workflow. As for Think-Cell, my employer currently covers its substantial license fee. Yet, due to the significant amount of time I spend in PowerPoint and the efficiency gains I personally experience with Think-Cell, I would be more than willing to invest in it myself if ever required.

In the next sections, I'll briefly introduce the add-ins in my toolkit, focusing on the features I routinely use to improve my workflow.

PowerTools: The Swiss Army Knife of PowerPoint

Cost: $49.99USD (Lifetime access for a one-time payment)

Website: https://pptpowertools.com/

PowerTools is the cornerstone of my add-in lineup. If I could choose only one, it'd be this. With its expansive, thoughtful toolkit, it not only enhances PowerPoint's capabilities but does so without the hefty recurring subscription fees that plague many other popular add-ins.

Why PowerTools Shines

• Extensive Toolkit: Of all the add-ins I've tried, PowerTools has the most comprehensive set of functionality and tools for my particular needs.
• One-time Purchase: In the sea of pricey subscription-based tools, PowerTools' one-time fee offers unmatched value. It trumps similar add-ins, like PPTProductivity or MLC, which charge a hefty annual fee. Pay once, and PowerTools is yours to keep.
• Designed for Professionals: Many add-ins seem tailored for educators or students, brimming with flamboyant animations and transitions. PowerTools, however, resonates with the needs of management consultants and corporate professionals. It cuts the fluff, zeroing in on essential, impactful tools.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: PowerTools operates seamlessly on both Windows and Mac, making it an excellent choice for those who, like me, switch between platforms.
• Reliable and Bug-free: While some add-ins can bog down PowerPoint, PowerTools runs smoothly, free from noticeable glitches or performance lags.
• Proactive Updates and Support: PowerTools' team regularly rolls out updates and is exceptionally responsive to user feedback. Once, a feature I suggested was included within a month – a testament to their commitment.

Key Features

• Fix/Insert Bullets: One of the challenges with PowerPoint is maintaining consistent bullet formatting, especially when copying from various sources. PowerTools' ability to format up to four levels of bullets ensures consistency in presentations. Whether you're starting fresh or reformatting an existing text box, it adjusts based on a predetermined bullet format.
• Copy and Paste Position/Dimensions: Design consistency across slides is crucial. PowerTools makes it easy by allowing you to copy the position and dimensions of a specific element and apply it elsewhere, ensuring uniformity and eliminating tedious manual adjustments.
• Alignment and Arrangement Tools: Whether you're trying to arrange items in a grid, straighten lines, or remove gaps between shapes, PowerTools offers a suite of functionalities to make this process efficient. The Position/Size Wizard stands out, making it possible to copy the position and size of an object across different slides—perfect for titles, stamps, and other repetitive elements.
• Table Management: PowerTools shines especially when it comes to handling tables. Beyond basic functionalities, it offers advanced tools such as the ability to quickly format tables to a preset style, convert tables to shapes (and vice versa), split tables, and even sum rows or columns. The 'Row and Column Gaps' tool is particularly handy for financial presentations, making data presentation more digestible.
• Export Options: Whether you're emailing a selection of slides as a PDF, saving a portion of your presentation, or exporting slide notes to Word, PowerTools covers all these needs. This ensures that your content reaches its intended audience in the desired format without fuss.
• Inserting Tools: PowerTools offers a myriad of insertion options, from custom footers, copyright symbols, Harvey Balls, to even QR codes. One feature I find remarkable is the 'Insert Table of Contents', saving time for those extensive presentations that need a summary slide. The ability to replace pictures without distorting them is also a valuable tool, ensuring the design integrity of slides.
• Review and Cleanup: Keeping presentations polished and free from distractions is essential. With PowerTools, you can quickly reset slide layouts, remove shadows, animations, hyperlinks, comments, and more. If you're sharing your presentation and want to make it "READ ONLY", the 'Convert slides to pictures' feature is especially handy. And if you're handing off a draft presentation but want to protect sensitive information, the 'Anonymize' function replaces all text with "Lorem Ipsum", making it safer to share.

PowerTools boasts a comprehensive suite of features designed to streamline and enhance the presentation-making process for business professionals. Whether you're in management consulting, investment banking, or various other sectors that rely on compelling presentations, this toolkit can be a valuable resource. Many other premium add-ins charge overpriced yearly subscription fees. In contrast, PowerTools stands out with its reasonable one-time fee, often presenting a more favorable value proposition for those seeking a robust toolset. The list above provides an overview of its capabilities, but more details can be found in its official documentation .

Think-Cell: Charting Made Simple

Cost: $320USD/Year

Website: https://www.think-cell.com/en/

Think-Cell is a highly regarded PowerPoint add-on specializing in advanced charting and slide layouts. With a user base of over 950,000 people at over 23,000 companies, including 8 of the top 10 consulting firms, it's the go-to charting add-on globally.

While its price tag may seem steep, I'd recommend this add-on to those who use PowerPoint almost daily. PowerTools, while excellent, falls short in enhancing PowerPoint's chart experience, and that's where Think-Cell comes in.

For frequent PowerPoint users like myself, there are three main justifications for Think-Cell's cost:

• It streamlines the PowerPoint user interface, workflows, and integrations, allowing me to produce charts and slides faster.
• It enables me to construct charts not natively available in PowerPoint, such as waterfall, Mekko, and Gantt charts.
• It boosts my chart effectiveness with decorations and features absent in PowerPoint, like CAGR arrows, value difference arrows, and value lines.

Key Think-Cell Features

Think-Cell integrates effortlessly with PowerPoint, adding a new section under the "Insert" tab of your ribbon. The toolbar is easy to use and performs on par with other native PowerPoint components, without any lag.

• Charting: From column, bar, line, area, scatterplots, bubble charts to waterfall, Mekko, Gantt charts, and more.
• Layouts: Auto-adjusting text boxes, process flows, tables, agendas, and table of contents.
• Excel integrations: Automatically populate and update chart data from an external Excel file.
• Extended PowerPoint functionality: Not found natively in PowerPoint, like saving and sending individual slides.

A Note on Think-Cell's Value Proposition: While Think-Cell does come with a significant price tag, it's crucial to evaluate its cost in the context of your professional needs. If you're in roles like management consulting or investment banking where presentations are the lifeblood of client communication, the efficiency gains from Think-Cell can be invaluable. Its features are designed to save hours of manual effort, translating into significant time and cost savings in the long run. Thus, for those who find themselves constantly toggling between Excel and PowerPoint, regularly presenting data-driven analysis, and needing advanced charting capabilities, the investment in Think-Cell can very well justify its costs. But for more casual users, the investment might be harder to rationalize. Always assess the frequency and depth of your PowerPoint usage before diving in.

PowerPoint Add-In Database

I compiled a list of add-ins that I tested as part of my research and experimentation with various PowerPoint add-ins, along with comments as to why it they didn’t make it into my productivity stack. Feel free to consult the list if there are particular features you are looking for, or if you would like to find free alternatives to the paid add-ins that I recommended earlier.

Database of Free Add-Ins

Database of premium add-ins, you might also like..., decoding innovation: the jobs-to-be-done framework explained, fooled by randomness: exploring the hidden influence of chance in success, file naming conventions: best practices for naming files, atomic habits: a practical guide to transformational behaviors, book summary: getting things done by david allen, member discussion.

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4 Powerful Tools to Improve Your Presentation

Your presentation is your value-add. It is how you are representing yourself and your ideas to the world. There’s no escaping the effort required to create a great presentation. There’s no shortcut (learning the ins and outs of structuring and writing a McKinsey-style presentation can help).

But there are tools that can help.  That can make the process of creating great content easier, more efficient. That can assist you in being the very best you can be.

Here are 4 enterprise-grade presentation tools to assist you with the process of creating a great presentation, so you can focus on the content.

think-cell belongs to a family of programs called PowerPoint add-ins. PowerPoint add-ins are supplemental programs that add custom commands or custom features to PowerPoint

think-cell is a high-end add-in that focuses on helping create great looking charts and graphs. The company was founded by alumnus of McKinsey and the add-in has been designed from the ground up to help simplify and automate many of the tedious aspects of slide production. Today think-cell is a go-to tool within top consultancies like McKinsey, BCG and Bain and the company has nearly 500,000 users.

You can think of think-cell as a tool to help eliminate some of the complexity and tedium of creating great looking charts in PowerPoint. Making PowerPoint do what you want it to can become complicated once you start trying to create more complex charts and graphs. think-cell helps automate much of the tedium.

How It Works

think-cell offers a wide array of services, though most center around graphing and charting.

think-cell excels at automating the creation of specific graph types that are difficult or time consuming to create normally within Excel or PowerPoint. Graph types such as Waterfalls, Gantts, and Mekkos can be made in minutes. Anyone with a lot of data-heavy visuals will treasure its time-saving properties. A great tool for pitch decks or sales presentations.

All business charts are created within PowerPoint, using the PowerPoint charting engine. You are not creating images which cannot be edited later. Instead, think-cell charts are PowerPoint charts, and you can leverage all the advantages of creating native PowerPoint charts, such as linking data directly to Excel documents.

One of the real strengths of think-cell is how it automatically deals with labels, visual annotations, and growth calculations – all of which can be difficult to manage normally within PowerPoint. Users only type in their text, and the tool sizes, stylizes, and positions it automatically.

Ultimately though, it is seeing it in action which brings the full power of think-cell to life. Have a look at this video:

Outside of graphing features, the agenda tool effortlessly creates a “table of contents” slide that automatically reflects its location within the slideshow, as well as outlines the slideshow as a whole.

It’s also worth mentioned that think-cell can convert graphs from Microsoft Visio or Microsoft Project to PowerPoint. Moreover, users without think-cell can still edit and modify the values in think-cell charts.

The beauty of think-cell is that it’s a time-saver. Even PowerPoint whizzes (especially?) will admit it makes things easier. If you make a lot of data-driven charts, think-cell is a godsend.

think-cell is not cheap. They purposefully are targeting the corporate market, so you can’t even get a single license – a minimum of 5 is the smallest order size, and that will cost 198 euros per license per year.

If you have a team that spends a lot of time working in PowerPoint, it will be money well spent.

You can try think-cell for free here .

Office Timeline

Office Timeline is a PowerPoint add-in that specializes in creating timeline and project schedule charts. And they have a free version!

What It Does

Office Timeline focuses on creating Gantt and timeline charts.

Perhaps the strongest advantage Timeline has, aside from its price, is the smooth and professional visuals of its graphs. They certainly don’t look like they came from a free downloadable add-on.

Office Timeline is less about problem solving, and more about shortcuts.

The Timeline Wizard lets you make timelines with ease, in the same fashion as think-cell. Simply plug in the variables, and the add-on does the rest: outlining key milestones, calculating task durations, tracking progress, and calculating percentages of completion. These automatic functions make it a great tool for project managers and other timetable keepers.

Admittedly, Office Timeline is a simple tool and can’t compete with the complexity and richness of MS Project. But that’s part of its appeal. Most timeline projects aren’t involved enough to use a fraction of MS Project’s capabilities; something smaller like Office Timeline is more suited for the average timeline.

Office Timeline does what it says on the tin – it creates timelines. And it works great. True to its pledge, it lets users easily create impressive-looking timelines that go a long way towards organizing tasks and keeping projects on schedule.

It is, however, limited in what it can do. For more advanced features you will have to upgrade to the Plus Edition, which costs $49 for Individual License and $99 for the Business Pack. With the Plus Edition you receive additional templates, milestone and task shapes, flexibility in how you display dates and other enhancements.

Download the free version here .

As corporations aim to reduce their office footprints and satisfy employee needs to work when they want and from where they want, the role of knowledge management has intensified. This holds true for employees that create and use presentations as finding the right slide at the right time can provide a huge boost to productivity.

TeamSlide is a slide management solution with a PowerPoint plug-in that enables incredibly easy access to your library of slides. With TeamSlide your organization can share and find slides from within PowerPoint, helping improve collaboration without disrupting your workflows.

Over time, as presentations are built, refined, and rewritten, across organizations, critical slides take on a life of their own. They become living and breathing creatures that evolve over time. They get separated from each other, modified to meet specific requirements and even the templates change over time. Employees need to be able to find the specific slide that meets their requirements and reflects the latest available firm-wide knowledge.

Corporations increasingly need to ensure that their employees are sharing a consistent message when it comes to content and brand. As a result, TeamSlide has developed a slide management solution to support collaboration.

TeamSlide ensures that everyone, regardless of role or department, can quickly access presentation slides without rummaging through archives, flipping through old decks, or emailing requests. It also safeguards against the usage of out-of-date slides, inconsistency in visual style, or last-ditch attempts to hastily recreate slides.

TeamSlide (along with the necessary plug-in) allows you to find and share slides without ever leaving PowerPoint. The TeamSlide pane opens up on the right side of the PowerPoint window, where you can conduct Google-like image searches without losing access to your current presentation. The search reveals preview images of all the matching slides, and inserting a slide into your presentation is as simple as clicking the preview.

Uploading and sharing slides is just as simple – simply right-click any slide for the options. This feature isn’t limited to slides, either; graphics, videos, icons, charts, etc. can all be shared through PowerPoint.

In the background, the TeamSlide server, which can sit in the cloud or on your servers, can be managed through an easy web-browser interface. You can set up libraries and manage user access rights. It has a host of features that help you quickly bring content online, allow you to set the color scheme to match your branding, and enable integration with your content and security systems. Most important, TeamSlide’s functionality allows it work within your knowledge management workflows.

If you work with presentations on a regular basis, TeamSlide can increase productivity and improve output quality.

For teams that work with presentations on a regular basis, a slide management solution can help increase productivity and improve output quality. With better access to your PowerPoint content you may be able to sell more effectively, align branding across your firm, and improve knowledge capture. TeamSlide is a premier slide management offering and may be a good fit for your organization.

TeamSlide costs $12.50 per person per monthly.

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is not a PowerPoint plugin but is, instead, a helpful app used for both compiling data before the presentation, and directly engaging the audience during it.

Poll Everywhere is not strictly a presentation tool. Its main function is as a polling app – users can poll large numbers of people (how large depends on the payment plan) and receive feedback in real time. The results are then graphed automatically.

For live business presentations which are presented to large groups, this polling functionality can add a lot to your presentation.

Poll Everywhere allows a presenter to ask their audience a question, collect answers in real-time and graphically show the results of their question in PowerPoint.

The audience literally watches their responses get compiled in real time.

Poll Everywhere collects poll answers in three ways:

• SMS texts – Smart phones, dumb phones, candy bar phones… anyone who can text can contribute to your poll
• Twitter – pick a hashtag
• Web – Respondents answer through the web via the poll’s web page at PollEverywhere.com

You can ask open-ended or multiple-choice questions. You can engage people all over the world, or in the same room. You can customize the style of the graphs.

The benefits to presentations, though, are most interesting. You can, for instance, ask your audience to vote on an issue, even writing-in new choices ‘on-the-fly’. Think of moderating a brainstorming session, where you write in everyone’s ideas and put the issue to a vote, with the entire process displayed cleanly in PowerPoint in real time, culminating in a picture-perfect graph.

For polling alone, there are plenty of other data-collecting tools, including the industry leader Survey Monkey. The reason we are talking about Poll Everywhere instead is because this is about presentation tools, and Poll Everywhere integrates better into PowerPoint. (Survey Monkey only offers PowerPoint exports with a professional plan.)

All you need is the PollEv Presenter add-on, and you can directly integrate your graphs into PowerPoint, even with the free account.

While not applicable to every presentation, Poll Everywhere is nonetheless a powerful tool when the circumstances warrant it. Keeping the audience interested in what you have to say is one of the greatest challenges of a presentation – live polling can be particularly effective.

The free version is somewhat restrictive, as it is limited to 25 responses. Poll Everywhere runs on a tiered, monthly pricing system depending on the number of responses.

Try Poll Everywhere for free here .

Blog > Best PowerPoint Alternatives in 2022

Best PowerPoint Alternatives in 2022

02.26.20   •  #presentation #powerpoint #alternatives.

Whatever the reason why you're looking for an alternative for PowerPoint may be, we're here to show you 7 great programs to use instead. Here's a quick overview - you'll find more detailed information below:

Overview video

Slides is amazing! The software is extremely intuitive to use and while there are design pre-sets, it still allows artistic freedom and adjustments. You will be left with wonderful slide decks. There is a free version, and the basic plan for 5$ a month is totally affordable as well. Presenting offline is only possible in the Lite and Pro version.

Who is it for?

Slides is for everyone who wants professional looking slides while not giving up creating your own creative slide deck. Its easy interface makes it perfect for anyone who doesn't want to spend a lot of time learning to use a new program.

• intuitive and easy to use
• integration of code or math formulas
• directly insert images from Unsplash or GIFs from giphy
• design your own themes
• slide decks in the free version are publicly viewable and may include ads

Pricing and Features

Free, Lite and Pro Version for single users, Team Version; Click here to see details

2. beautiful.ai

beautiful.ai (as suggested in the name) is a presentation software that uses artificial intelligence to get the best possible slides. And the results are - well - beautiful. After a short tutorial and some time to get used to the program, playing around with slides, elements and texts and seeing how the AI assistant transforms them is actually a lot of fun! In the Pro version, there's a desktop player included. The free version is for online use only.

beautiful.ai might not be the easiest tool to use on this list, but it is definitely one of the most interesting ones! We recommend it to anyone who wants to try out something new and to people who are thrilled about AI and tech innovations.

• really fun to use and play around with
• design is always amazing due to AI
• beautiful templates
• lots of functions and slide pre-sets even in the free version
• Limit of 60 slides in the free version
• Logo branding in the free version
• takes a little time to get used to

There is a basic plan and a Pro plan. Click here to get more information .

3. SlideLizard LIVE

SlideLizard is a PowerPoint Add-on that extends its features and makes it so much better. You’ll get everything you’ve ever missed in PowerPoint in just one software – poll creation, a live Q&A feature, slide sharing, audience feedback and presentation analytics. You won’t need a PowerPoint alternative anymore – because PowerPoint will have everything you need.

Everyone who wants to engage their audience and improve their presentation skills – especially people who do presentations often.

• get anonymous Feedback easily
• create polls
• analyse your held presentations
• answer questions as they arrive
• seamless integration into PowerPoint
• PowerPoint is required

Free and PRO versions for single users, Enterprise and single event plan on request. Click here to see details .

4. Zoho Show

Zoho Show is a free tool for creating presentations. It resembles PowerPoint in use. Even though it's completely free, it contains lots of features and has everything you need to hold a basic presentation. Again, it is pretty easy to use. You do need an internet connection to create and present you presentation via Zoho Show, but it can be downloaded and opened in PowerPoint or as a PDF as well.

Since it is completely free, Zoho Show is especially perfect for students or anyone who doesn't want to spend money on a new presentation software. For free software, Zoho Show does a very good job.

• completely free
• similar to PowerPoint in function
• animation of objects and transitions
• easy to use
• collaborate with colleagues
• not that many templates available
• creating presentations may take a while

Zoho Show can be used for free with all features.

Canva offers lots of design templates and makes it possible to create visually stunning presentations within a short amount of time. It is not just a platform for creating presentations, but also for designing graphics for other purposes (eg. Social Media, Flyers,…) , so if you find also need to create content of that kind, Canva might be the perfect tool for you. You need an internet connection to create the slides, which you can download afterwards.

Canva is great for students, as the basic plan is free and completely sufficient for non-business purposes. It is great software for anyone who is looking for an easy and quick way to create professional-looking presentations and other types of content.

• huge selection of high-quality design templates
• choose from a variety of free and low-priced images, backgrounds and music
• slides can be downloaded and opened with PowerPoint
• limited storage space in basic plan
• no animation of objects (except for predefined illustrations)

There is a free basic plan, a Pro plan and an Enterprise plan for companies. Click here to see details .

Crello is similar to Canva. It is not only for creating presentations, but also Social Media posts, banners, prints and more. As for presentations, you can choose from a huge variety of templates. You basically only have to exchange the pictures and add text to finish your presentation. Internet connection is required.

Crello is the perfect tool for all designers, whether you're a beginner or already advanced. The free version offers a good deal of features, so it is definitely an option for people who do not want to spend money on software.

• lots of beautiful templates
• many features in the free version
• no animations
• no transitions

Crello offers a free basic plan and a pro plan. Click here to see details .

7. Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck is a well-known alternative for PowerPoint. People like it for its user-friendly interface and for how easily you can create amazing, professional presentations. An internet connection is required while creating, Pro users can download their slides for offline viewing.

Due to the fact that you basically have to pay in order to use Haiku Deck, it might not be the best option for everyone. Presenters who don’t mind spending some dollars per month for good presentation software are likely to be satisfied.

• professional and widely used software for creating presentations
• user-friendly with lots of options for editing
• no real free version (you can only have one deck in the free one and the features are very limited)
• no Pro trial without entering payment information

Haiku Deck offers a Pro and a Premium plan. Students, teachers and non-profit organizations only pay half the price. Click here for details .

...or stick with PowerPoint instead?

While playing around with tools and alternatives is without a doubt fun, we are still huge fans of PowerPoint. It is the all-time allrounder for presentations, works offline and has so much to offer! As with most of the presented software, you can download the created slides and open them in PowerPoint as well. For anything you might miss in PowerPoint, there's probably already a great Plugin to help you. Click here to see the 5 best PowerPoint Plugins in 2020 .

What is the best PowerPoint alternative?

Unfortunately there is not THE best alternative. It depends very much on your application, which alternative is best suited for you. Our blog entry gives a good overview which software fits for whom.

Are there free PowerPoint alternatives?

Yes, there are free alternatives. These are free, for example: Canva, beautiful.ai or Crello. Our blog gives a good overview of the respective prices and features.

Related articles

About the author.

Pia Lehner-Mittermaier

Pia works in Marketing as a graphic designer and writer at SlideLizard. She uses her vivid imagination and creativity to produce good content.

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ActivePresentation Designer - $149

ActivePresentation Designer  solves the problem of quickly navigating through various slides in a presentation without losing your audience. Moving back and forth between slides can be problematic if those slides are far apart in a presentation. The plugin adds an interactive menu bar to your PowerPoint presentations, allowing you to navigate intuitively during them. In addition to its core navigation feature, the plugin bundles other functionality such as an Export Wizard and a Confidentiality System. Using the Confidentiality System, for instance, allows you to tag highly confidential slides, which the plugin prevents from being exported.

Imagine the last PowerPoint presentation you created. You probably spent way too much time on the minute design details like adjusting borders and aligning text boxes. PowerPoint certainly can be a hassle, especially if you don’t have advanced knowledge of the software and its features. 

It’s no wonder why so many people are seeking PowerPoint-alternative presentation software options. Tools like Beautiful.ai, Visme and Prezi save time and plenty of time and frustration when designing presentations, plus many of the tools allow the most amateur of designers to craft masterful and engaging presentation designs.

With so many PowerPoint-alternative software options available, how can you choose the best one for presentation? It can be hard to know which is better than the next. To help out our readers, we’ve combined another list of PowerPoint alternatives for 2022. 

Here, we’ve compiled basic information about 10 different alternative presentation programs to PowerPoint. Which is your favorite?

1. Beautiful.ai

We hate to brag, but our PowerPoint-alternative software is perfect for designing professional-level presentations in a fraction of the time it takes to create a mediocre PowerPoint slide deck. By choosing to advanced presentation software like Beautiful.ai , users are handing over the bulk of the design work to artificial intelligence. Just add your content to slide templates and watch as the AI automatically adjusts your format based on the principles of good design.

Beautiful.ai users never waste valuable time aligning elements, establishing margins or balancing fonts. Users also benefit from a vast library full of thousands of free stock images, icons and logos, so they don’t need to dedicate time to seeking and importing images from an outside source. With Beautiful.ai, users even can add extra pizzazz to their presentations by customizing engaging infographics and adding eye-catching animations. Users don’t even have to build their presentations from the ground up, since Beautiful.ai features a plethora of customizable presentation templates , curated to fit a variety of topics and purposes.

2. Google Slides

Do you have a Google account? If so, then you already have access to the search giant’s own PowerPoint-alternative presentation software. Anyone with a Google account can access Google Slides from within the company’s suite of productivity applications . In terms of its user interface, Google Slides resembles PowerPoint in many ways, but presentations can be shared among Google users, making it a popular collaboration tool. Google Slides has its limits, however, since only a limited library of shapes and icons are available to add without seeking and importing the images from elsewhere.

Visme’s PowerPoint-alternative presentation software helps users design slide decks, infographics, interactive charts and other visual content. The easy-to-use cloud-based tool allows users to move elements around the workspace, and new content can be added by dragging and dropping it into place. Visme users can build presentations from scratch by starting with a blank canvas, or they can customize a variety of templates. The presentation software also features a collection of thousands of icons, images and data visualizations, and users even can choose to boost engagement by adding elements like video, audio and GIF files.

4. Zoho Show

With Zoho’s PowerPoint-alternative presentation software, users can create, edit, share and deliver presentations from anywhere while collaborating with their teams. Zoho Show is popular thanks to its minimalist and contextual user interface. The program recognizes the task the user is conducting, and automatically provides the most relevant options to reduce overall clutter on the screen. The presentation software also features more than 100 templates for a variety of topics and purposes, from startup pitch decks and business proposals to sales decks and project management presentations.

Prezi’s presentation software is a true alternative to PowerPoint . Rather than design standard slide decks, Prezi users create animated, non-sequential presentations that highlight topics and uncover subtopics with an engaging zoom feature. The PowerPoint-alternative software is an enticing alternative for creating visual presentations, but it’s probably better suited for experienced presentation designers thanks to its unique design. Still, Prezi is a perfect choice for presenters seeking a more creative way to capture an audience's attention.

6. FlowVella

Hoping to design a presentation on your smartphone or tablet? FlowVella is a popular presentation creation platform with a special focus on mobile device support. The PowerPoint-alternative presentation software allows users to create dynamic and interactive visual content from anywhere. Presentations created with FlowVella are especially engaging to audiences since they often combine words, images, video, links, galleries and PDFs to create an interactive story. The software is simple to use thanks to dozens of templates and a convenient drag-and-drop feature for adding content.

7. Haiku Deck

A free app for making attractive presentations, Haiku Deck is both simple and fun to use. The presentation design software uses artificial intelligence to transform ideas into eye-catching slide decks. This PowerPoint-alternative presentation tool is designed for users who want to craft presentations with simple messages using basic templates. And the drag-and-drop interface makes it a tool even amateur designers can master in no time at all.

Canva offers much more than an alternative to PowerPoint. Users can rely on the visual design platform to create social media graphics, posters, invitations, business cards and all sorts of other documents along with presentations. Canva features thousands of professional templates, images and other content elements, as well as features to help teams collaborate with ease. The software tool’s drag-and-drop interface makes it simple for non-designers to customize templates and even edit photos with little experience.

9. Genially

Traditional slide decks are designed to be led by a presenter. That worked great until so much of the global workplace went remote. Genially is a popular PowerPoint-alternative software choice because its interactive features and animated templates are perfect for building self-led presentations. Thanks to a variety of interactive buttons, designers can show their audiences additional context, skip to specific deck pages and even navigate to external locations with links. Genially features a variety of customizable templates on topics ranging from business proposals to social media presentations, making it a simple choice for amateur presentation designers.

No sooner did the PowerPoint-alternative presentation software launch in 2020, than it was already called a “PowerPoint killer” within the sector. It shouldn’t be any surprise, since Pitch was created as a tool for non-designers to build powerful and attractive pitch decks. The presentation software features a vast library of presentation templates and plenty of options for collaboration. Plus, Pitch’s customizable presentation styles allow users easily to stay on brand throughout their entire pitch decks. Plus, Pitch presentations can be integrated with Google Sheets, Google Analytics and other productivity programs.

Check out the best presentation software for 2021 and 2019 .

Samantha Pratt Lile

Samantha is an independent journalist, editor, blogger and content manager. Examples of her published work can be found at sites including the Huffington Post, Thrive Global, and Buzzfeed.

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7 Best Free PowerPoint Alternatives To Level Up Your Presentations

Apache OpenOffice

Google slides, libreoffice, propresenter, seven free powerpoint alternatives to help design engaging presentations..

Think of presentations and you think of Microsoft PowerPoint. An industry standard, PowerPoint is a long-standing tool that offers an easy-to-navigate interface to create impactful presentations for business meetings, sales pitches, and more.

However, despite being widely used, Microsoft PowerPoint might not be the most accessible tool, especially if you’re looking for free software. PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft Office suite and can only be accessed by purchasing the suite. Small businesses, especially sales and marketing companies, need software that helps design impactful presentation slides without draining their finances. That’s where free PowerPoint alternatives come to the rescue.

We asked users about the PowerPoint alternative they considered when looking for presentation software for their business. Here are the seven best PowerPoint alternatives (listed alphabetically) they identified.

See the full list of Microsoft Powerpoint alternatives.

1. Apache OpenOffice

Apache OpenOffice is an open-source software suite that offers a presentation tool to design multimedia slides.

The presentation software lets you add 2D and 3D clip art, special effects (such as slide transitions), and animation to your presentations. It offers a built-in template library with a range of templates to use in your slides.

Using the tool’s multi-monitor support, you can showcase additional material while presenting your main slides. You also get access to a drawing and diagramming toolkit to draw custom shapes to add to your presentations.

Apache OpenOffice offers chat and email support. It has a desktop application for Linux, Mac, and Windows users.

Key Features

• Collaboration tools
• Data import/export
• Database creation
• Document generation
• Office suite
• Organizational charting

Trial/Free Version

• Free Version

Device compatibility

Screenshots.

Creating a presentation in Apache OpenOffice

Here’s how Apache OpenOffice compares to PowerPoint

Both PowerPoint and Apache OpenOffice provide multiple slide views, such as the outline view and presenter view. However, Apache gives quick access to all its views from the main window, which PowerPoint doesn’t. Also, Apache OpenOffice has a better user interface and multiple hotkeys for quick access.

Platforms supported: Both PowerPoint and Apache OpenOffice are available as desktop applications for Mac and Windows. Apache OpenOffice is also available for Linux users.

Typical customers: Both tools are used by freelancers and small businesses. However, PowerPoint is also used by large enterprises.

Customer support: Both tools offer chat and email support.

Pricing: Apache OpenOffice is open source and free to use, whereas subscription for Microsoft 365 Personal Suite, containing PowerPoint, starts at $6.99 per user per month.

Canva is a design and presentation app that helps create infographics, logos, banners, and full-fledged presentation slides for team and client meetings.

The software offers a library of presentation templates you can access to add pre-built videos, logos, and graphics to your presentations. Additionally, Canva lets you collaborate with teammates by sharing access to the content dashboard.

You can add animation to your slides, customize the color scheme, and remove the background from images using the background remover tool. You can also use the version history to revert to a previous design instead of undoing all changes.

Canva offers chat and email support. It is web-based and also has applications for desktop and mobile (iOS and Android) devices.

• Access controls/permissions
• Artwork management
• Asset categorization
• Asset library
• Asset sharing

Design catalog in Canva

Here’s how Canva compares to PowerPoint

Canva offers a variety of pre-built templates and font types compared to PowerPoint and is easier to navigate for first-time users. It also integrates with third-party social media platforms, making it easy for you to share graphics and presentations directly to an audience.

Platforms supported: You can download both tools as desktop applications. However, Canva also provides a web-based version and has a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.

Typical customers: Both tools are used by freelancers, small to midsize businesses, and large enterprises.

Customer support: Both Canva and PowerPoint offer chat and email support.

Pricing: Pricing for PowerPoint starts at $6.99 per user per month, while Canva’s paid plans start at $12.99 per user per month.

3. Google Slides

Google Slides is a presentation tool that is part of the Google Workspace suite. The software lets you create and sync slides, share them with your teammates, use comments, and assign action items to build presentations together.

With Google Slides, you get an easy-to-use presenter view for presenting slides during meetings, referencing speaker notes, showcasing text to viewers, and accessing live captions for audio content. You can integrate the software with third-party video calling platforms to present slides during online conferences.

Features such as smart compose and autocorrect help eliminate spelling and formatting errors automatically from your slides. An offline mode helps you work on your slides without an internet connection.

• Audio file management
• Customizable templates
• Offline editing

Creating a presentation in Google Slides

Here’s how Google Slides compares to PowerPoint

Google Slides is an online tool and doesn’t require any software installation, whereas PowerPoint is more suited to offline work and comes as a desktop app that needs to be installed. Also, Google Slides is cloud based, and it offers better collaboration and is suitable for teams with many people.

Platforms supported: Google Slides is web-based, while PowerPoint is a desktop application.

Typical customers: Both tools are used by freelancers, small businesses, and large enterprises

Customer support: Both Google Slides and PowerPoint offer chat and email support.

Pricing: Google Slides is free to use. However, you can buy the Google Workspace Suite, which provides additional tools and more storage space, at $6 per user per month. The cost for PowerPoint starts at $6.99 per user per month.

4. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is an open-source suite designed to create, manage, edit, and modify documents, spreadsheets, and presentation slides.

The software offers multiple editing and viewing modes for editing, outlining, and organizing text and images in slides. It lets you edit and manage notes that appear on individual slides. It also provides a slide sorter to locate and sort presentation slides.

With LibreOffice, you can manually navigate the slides during presentations or schedule their transition using a built-in timer.

• Document classification
• File conversion
• File sharing
• Full text search

Adding graphics in LibreOffice

Here’s how LibreOffice compares to PowerPoint

LibreOffice is an open-source solution, so it’s free to use. PowerPoint, on the other hand, needs a paid subscription. Also, LibreOffice works better for Linux users, as PowerPoint is unavailable for Linux. Additionally, you can customize LibreOffice by accessing its source code.

Platforms supported: PowerPoint is available for Mac and Windows, while LibreOffice is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Typical customers: Both software tools are used by freelancers and small businesses. However, large enterprises tend to use PowerPoint as well.

Customer support: Both PowerPoint and LibreOffice offer chat and email support.

Pricing: LibreOffice is free to use, while subscription for PowerPoint starts at $6.99 per user per month.

Prezi is a presentation software tool designed for freelancers and small businesses. It helps create video presentations for business meetings and client pitches.

With Prezi, you get a canvas to build slides and add data to your presentations. Its Smart Structure feature helps arrange content within slides using a simple drag-and-drop option, without disrupting your layout. Another feature called Zoom Reveal lets you zoom in and focus on slides to look at critical details and change minute aspects of your presentation.

The software offers a built-in video tool that allows you to appear alongside your content while presenting slides during remote meetings or presentations.

• Media library

Adding animations in Prezi

Here's how Prezi compares to PowerPoint

Prezi offers a better interface than PowerPoint and provides a zoom-in feature to oversee crucial details in slides. It is easier to use and integrates with third-party social media and video-calling platforms to share assets easily.

Platforms supported: PowerPoint is available for Mac and Windows, while Prezi is web-based.

Customer support: PowerPoint offers chat and email support, while Prezi provides chat, email, and phone support.

Pricing: Subscription for PowerPoint starts at $6.99 per user per month. For Prezi, paid plans start at $12 per user per month.

6. ProPresenter

ProPresenter is a presentation tool for live events. It helps present slides to live audiences during sporting events, conferences, trade shows, and worship gatherings.

ProPresenter helps display lyrics, slides, and high-quality media. It provides transitions and onscreen rolling announcements for slides. It also lets you present your slides on multiple screens, each showcasing a different type of content. You can use the preview window to monitor all your screens.

The tool’s built-in library allows you to save all your presentation content. You can also automatically change the text color in a presentation slide at different time intervals.

• Chord chart management
• Drag & drop
• Event management
• For religious organizations
• Layout & design

Slides in ProPresenter

Here’s how ProPresenter compares to PowerPoint

Both PowerPoint and ProPresenter are presentation tools, but ProPresenter lets you live stream your presentations and add announcement layers and timers with action triggers. Also, the software is more suited for live events and gatherings.

Platforms supported: PowerPoint is available on Windows and Mac, while ProPresenter is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. ProPresenter also has a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.

Typical customers: Both tools are used by freelancers, small businesses, and large enterprises.

Customer support: Both PowerPoint and ProPresenter offer chat and email support.

Pricing: PowerPoint starts at $6.99 per user per month, while you can rent ProPresenter for $99 per user per month.

Visme is a design and presentation tool that helps create graphics and presentation slides.

The software offers multiple pre-built templates to create slides for your presentations. It also lets you import your designs on the platform and use them for your slides.

With a drag-and-drop editor, you can arrange the layout and structure of your slides according to your preference. You can import a PowerPoint presentation and edit it in Visme. You can also record audio and video files with a built-in recorder and add them to your presentations.

Template library in Visme

Here’s how Visme compares to PowerPoint

PowerPoint is a stand-alone presentation tool. Visme, on the other hand, also lets you create graphics and infographics on its platform. The software offers analytics for graphics and presentations that you share publicly and assess engagement for your assets.

Platforms supported: PowerPoint is available on Windows and Mac as a desktop app. Visme, on the other hand, is a web-based tool.

Customer support: PowerPoint offers chat and email support. Visme offers phone, chat, and email support.

Pricing: Subscription for PowerPoint starts at $6.99 per user per month, whereas paid plans for Visme begin at $15 per user per month.

Look at all options before finalizing the best PowerPoint alternative

Despite its popularity, Microsoft PowerPoint may not always be the right choice if presentations are crucial for your business. You can, instead, choose the various software options discussed in this article.

If you want a completely free and customizable tool , select either Apache OpenOffice or OpenLibre. You can access the source code of these tools to customize their functionality per your preference.

If you create a lot of posters, designs, and infographics , Visme and Canva are good options, as both help create such assets and include them in presentations.

If real-time collaboration is crucial for your business , then Google Slides is worth a shot, as it provides collaboration for small and large teams alike.

If you want to do video presentations and feature them during remote meetings , Prezi, with its built-in video presentation functionality, is an ideal solution.

If your work involves live audiences and large gatherings , ProPresenter might be an ideal tool, as it helps stream presentations to larger groups and is more suited for outdoor events.

How did we choose these products? We didn’t—you did

At Capterra, we objectively select and rank products based on a methodology developed by our research team. Some vendors pay us when they receive web traffic, but this has no influence on our methodology.

Products featured in this article were identified in user reviews as the other products considered by buyers at the same time as PowerPoint. In this article, we highlighted the products with the highest number of other products considered mentions.

To be included in this list, alternative products had to provide the following core presentation software features: animations, transitions, media library.

Disclaimer: We conducted this analysis based on reviews and ratings data as of Jan. 24, 2022. In order to present the most up-to-date information, the product cards below show real-time ratings. Please note that this means the ratings’ value in the product card may not reflect the value of the ratings at the time of analysis.

Product research for this article was contributed by Himanshi Arora.

Was this article helpful?

About the author.

Ashish Upadhyay

Ashish Upadhyay is a content writer at Capterra, helping small businesses identify the right software for their business needs by analyzing user reviews data for the highest rated products in relevant software categories. Prior to joining Capterra, he worked in insurtech, fintech, and real estate. Specializing in marketing, project, and IT management, Ashish’s works have been featured in MAST magazine and Medium. In his free time, he enjoys working out and playing video games.

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The 8 Best Free PowerPoint Alternatives

Professional results for tight budgets

• Swansea University, Staffordshire University

Microsoft PowerPoint is a great tool for creating professional-looking slideshows and presentations. However, the home version requires a Microsoft 365 subscription, and the free mobile app locks some features behind the sub as well. Fortunately, there are plenty of free PowerPoint software alternatives out there. Here's a look at some of the best options and how they compare to PowerPoint. 

Best Direct PowerPoint Replacement: Google Slides

Very similar to PowerPoint.

Free to use. 

Compatible with PowerPoint.

An internet connection is strongly recommended. 

Where there's a need for an app, Google seems to have it covered. Google Slides is its PowerPoint equivalent and it's a lot like Microsoft's app. Very simple to use and offering full compatible with the alternative, you can access Google Slides via your browser and easily create custom presentations with audio and your own images, all entirely for free. It also offers great live collaboration features for teamwork purposes.

The only minor downside is you need an internet connection to at least get started but the service does also work offline with presentations syncing once you're back online.

Best for Designers: Prezi

Video editing included.

Can easily make data visualizations. 

Stylish user interface.

Free option is pretty basic.

No support.

Presentations viewable by all.

Prezi is a great option for designers who have a vision but aren't technically proficient at achieving it. Its simple drag and drop interface makes it a breeze to organize your presentation just how you want it. Backed up with other Prezi apps that mean you can create videos or more stylish data visualizations than simple graphs, it's ideal for industries that are more visual than others. A series of pre-made templates makes it all the more attractive. 

Prezi isn't as free as it seems though. To get the full wealth of features like advanced image editing, offline access, and narration, you'll need to pay a subscription fee.

Best for Quick Results: Zoho Show

A theme for every occasion.

Quick to create something.

Intuitive interface.

Need to be online to use it.

Simple to use yet highly effective is the sweet spot for quick results, and that's certainly the case with Zoho Show. You might need to be online to use it, but it's worth the connection with an intuitive user interface that adapts to what you need to do. You can easily embed videos, tweets, and images into your presentations with some neat transition effects making things more interesting. 

Collaboration tools further sweeten the deal with annotation features meaning you can work together well as a team and fast.

Best for Animations: Powtoon

Great animation tools.

Easy to use.

Can export to social media platforms.

Branding applied on free presentations.

More about animations than slideshows. 

PowToon tackles PowerPoint presentations from a slightly different angle than a lot of its competitors. It's primarily great for creating full animations and videos rather than presentations that you would click through and present yourself. That lends itself perfectly to the internet which is why it's so useful that you can export your presentations to various forms of social media. 

With a drag and drop template, you can create something within about 20 minutes from your browser. The free version bundles in branding logos so viewers will always know you've used PowToon to create them but that's a small price to pay for an otherwise very accessible and simple to use piece of software. 

Best for Mass Branding: Renderforest

Plenty of options for expanding branding.

300MB cloud storage for free.

Unlimited exports.

Exports can be low in quality.

Content is watermarked.

RenderForest thinks of itself as more than just a PowerPoint alternative. It tackles everything you might need from creating logos to designing promo videos, music visualizations, landing pages, and websites. That's on top of its extensive animations and intro creation. That might sound intimidating but the service keeps things simple, so it won't take you long to mock something up and develop it.

Stick to the free version and there are some restrictions such as branding on your videos, lower quality logos, and so forth, but it's a solid start for an otherwise entirely free service. In particular, if you just need to concoct a quick 3-minute video for a presentation, RenderForest has you covered.

Best for Non-Designers: Visme

Plenty of templates to choose from.

Can set up five projects at once.

Charts and widgets support.

Limited cloud storage.

Visme branding on free plan.

Been asked to make a presentation and you don't know where to start? Visme is perfect for those that aren't well versed with graphics as it offers an extensive template library. The free plan limits your options a little but there are still some decent choices here. In addition, the service provides cool ways to make stats and data look exciting thanks to chart and widget support. It's all done through a simple drag and drop interface too that makes it super simple to add video and embed other content. 

Just bear in mind that storage options are a little limited and everything on the free plan will contain Visme branding. 

Best for Office Replacement: LibreOffice Impress

Full program rather than browser-based.

Extensive support. 

Similar experience to Microsoft Office.

Requires installation. 

Not quite as intuitive as alternatives.

LibreOffice is a popular free alternative to Microsoft Office, so it makes sense to use LibreOffice Impress if you want the closest experience to Microsoft's package. Unlike most of the others here, you need to install LibreOffice on your PC or Mac which means it's no good for Chromebooks or moving between different systems. However, in exchange, you get an intuitive experience that makes it simple to create slideshows, whether you're handing them out to a class or conference afterwards, or simply projecting them on screen. 

Bear in mind you have to seek out templates yourself though which may be off-putting for the least technically minded user out there. 

Download for:

Best for Apple Users: Keynote

Simple to use. 

Apple Pencil support. 

Cloud based as well as app based.

App is only on Apple devices.

Keynote is Apple's direct competitor to Microsoft PowerPoint and it's a great alternative, especially if you're a Mac user. With app support for iOS and Mac, it takes seconds to get started. Alternatively, PC users can use Keynote via the iCloud website and easily work across multiple devices. 

One of the best features is the ability to use the Apple Pencil on an iPad to create diagrams or illustrations making it great for skilled artists. As well as that, Apple provides plenty of convenient templates for personal and professional projects. 

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