Slides has automatic file-save and versioningĪutosave is available in PowerPoint, but it’s not turned on by default, and it only works if users are logged into their OneDrive or Sharepoint account.
Tip: Accessing, editing, and commenting on slides from your mobile device is a great experience, allowing you to collaborate anywhere, anytime. A user can even have the same slide deck open on multiple devices, and Slides won’t miss a beat.
If the stars don’t align precisely, co-authoring doesn’t work at all.Ĭollaborating in Slides is just like collaborating in Docs and Sheets: Some of them will see comments and edits in real-time, while others … well, won’t. At the very least, all collaborators aren’t guaranteed the same experience when editing and commenting. Just like Word and Excel, real-time co-authoring in PowerPoint hinges on many external factors, including which device each user is working on, whether all users are part of the same organization, and where the slide deck being worked on is stored. As a result, PowerPoint’s “co-authoring” tools are clunky and complex - another serious problem in modern workplaces, where presentation decks are typically put together by teams. Slides was designed for collaborationįurther to the above, collaboration abilities were shoehorned into PowerPoint many years after the app first hit the market. Your IT and security admins will appreciate not having any updates to manage! 2. pptx files that older versions of PowerPoint won’t open).
Users never have to worry about running an outdated version of the software or whether other users won’t be able to open a Slides file because they’re running an older version (we’re looking at you. Slides being cloud-based also means that all updates are automatically handled by Google. They can also access and edit their Slides decks on as many devices as they want, at no extra charge.
Other than offline storage, which is only supported on Google Chrome, Slides users enjoy the same user interface, functionality, and integration with the rest of Google Workspace regardless of which browser, operating system or device they’re using. In this age of distributed workforces, these are pretty serious limitations.Ĭonversely, Google Slides is fully cloud-native, browser-centric, and accessible from any device, using any modern web browser. 1 While there is a web-based version of PowerPoint available, it lacks some key features, including advanced design tools and the ability to integrate Excel charts.
Most users still install PowerPoint onto their local devices, and they’re limited to five devices per license. Cloud-based features were shoehorned in later - much later, and it shows. PowerPoint, like the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite, was originally designed as a desktop app. Slides was built in the cloud, for the cloud Still using PowerPoint to whip up slide decks for webinars and other presentations? Here are 5 reasons to make the switch to Google Slides, the modern, collaborative, cloud-based alternative.