Overview
There are several reasons why PowerPoint files may not import the way you expect. Below we have broken out some of the common ways that PowerPoint imports look different after an import along with some troubleshooting steps to fix these issues.
Fonts
In some cases you may find that a file imported into ProPresenter shows the text with a different font on the screen than the font that was selected inside of PowerPoint. This is most often caused by fonts that were installed on the computer where the PowerPoint was created but not installed on the destination computer.
In some cases PowerPoint files can save the fonts as a part of the PowerPoint file, and in some cases ProPresenter can import those fonts that are contained within a PowerPoint file. If this feature is supported in your version of ProPresenter then you would not need to do anything special; it will prompt you if you need to transfer the font.
If this promo does not come up, then you may need to manually copy the font from your original computer to your destination, you may need to download a copy of the font on the destination computer, or you may need to select a new font to use.
Resolution/Aspect Ratio
Another common problem during the import process an be an incompatibility with aspect ratios. These would be issues such as objects showing up on the wrong location, or the entire slide being stretched or squished.
The most common reason for this type of issue would be trying to import a PowerPoint file that has a different aspect ratio than what ProPresenter has. It is a best practice to make sure that your PowerPoint file has the same aspect ratio as what ProPresenter has; this will create the best outcome in all cases.
The best way to make sure that you have the same aspect ratio inside of PowerPoint as you do in ProPresenter would be to follow these steps:
- Open ProPresenter on your destination computer
- In the top left, click ProPresenter, then click on Preferences
- Click on the Display tab
- Make a note of the Resolution (height and width) listed in the lower left
- Open the PowerPoint file that you are trying to import
- In the top left click on File > Page Setup
- In the Height and Width boxes, type the appropriate resolution that you had noted from inside of ProPresenter, each followed by “px” (as an example, if ProPresenter has a resolution of 1920x1080, then in PowerPoint you would type in “1920 px” and “1080 px”)
- After you type in the numbers, PowerPoint will convert your pixel inputs to inches; that is normal
- Click on OK in the lower right
- If you see a window asking if you want to Scale the content, click on Scale
- Walk through your PowerPoint file to make sure that your content scaled correctly
- Import the PowerPoint into ProPresenter as normal
This will change the resolution (as well as the aspect ratio) of the PowerPoint file so that when it is imported into ProPresenter it will import with the correct formatting.