In the world of Sales Enablement, working on your sales collateral is a must. To truly harvest the power of content, it needs to be impactful. And, when it comes to content creation, InDesign offers increased design capabilities. However, there may be situations where this format is not the most suitable. Just convert the file to the format you need right ? Well sadly, it is not that easy! Indeed, there is no straightforward conversion from InDesign to PowerPoint (or any Microsoft Office Suite software for that matter).
In this article, we will give you a quick trick to successfully go from InDesign to PowerPoint in a few steps.
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What is InDesign ?
InDesign is a desktop publishing software developed by Adobe that has been part of Adobe's Creative Suite since its first release. InDesign enables users to layout and publish a wide array of documents such as brochures,flyers, newspapers and magazines to name a few. It integrates with other Adobe applications such as Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, or Illustrator for example.
InDesign is widely used by designers as well as creative professionals. As mentioned it can be used to create printed documents. However, it is also used to design electronic material such as email templates, online newsletters, or ads. This is very handy for designers who wish to add multimedia elements such as animations, sound to their otherwise static content pieces.
Upsides
- InDesign offers professional, high-quality output destined for printing
- InDesign makes it easy to manage high-quality graphics image and other brand elements
- InDesign ensures a printed or digital outcome without compromises in terms of design
- InDesign material can be relatively easy to update (images and/or text) once the initial design is created
Downsides
- InDesign is an unfamiliar software for non-designers.
- Changes to existing content require either an outsourced skilled designer or an employee with a certain level of expertise with InDesign
- If used internally, there is a cost of subscription
- As a specific skill is required to make modifications, last minutes changes can be especially tricky.
When is conversion necessary ?
If InDesign is a very powerful tool in terms of design capabilities, it requires specific skills to be used. In other words, if you are not familiar with the software you will not be able to modify a file according to your needs.
However, sales collateral often require additional adjustments and not everyone has the possibility to have a designer make those changes last minute. It is exactly in these situations where conversion can be a life saver! Not everyone is an InDesign expert, but we are pretty confident that a large majority of people know their way around PowerPoint.
How to convert an InDesign file into PowerPoint ?
The first thing to note is that there is no straightforward method to convert InDesign to PowerPoint. It would be too easy otherwise right?
If you want a PowerPoint result that remotely resembles the original InDesign input, there is a two step process that you can follow.
1. From InDesign to PDF
The first step is to convert your InDesign file to PDF. To do this, simply open your file in InDesign and go to File>Export.
In the Save As menu, select Adobe PDF (for print) as your file format.
2. From PDF to PowerPoint
There are several websites online that allow you to convert a PDF file into PowerPoint for free. Do not hesitate to give the following a try:
If you've got the Pro version of Adobe PDF, the conversion option is included in your app.
Notes
- A similar process can also be used to convert an InDesign file into a Word document for example (Adobe PDF to Word). However, it is important to note that when it comes to file format conversion from InDesign to the Microsoft Office suite results are not perfect. Indeed, bear in mind that the quality of your file might be affected by the conversion but that the key design elements will translate.