how to make a powerpoint presentation on canva

How to Create Presentations in Canva

Parth Shah is an evergreen freelance writer covering how-tos, app guides, comparisons, listicles, and troubleshooting guides on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and smart TV platforms. He has over five years of experience and has covered 1,500+ articles on GuidingTech and Android Police. In his free time, you will see him binge-watching Netflix shows, reading books, and traveling.

Afam has been a content writer with Guiding Tech Media since August 2023. However, his experience in tech writing dates back to 2018, when he worked as a freelance writer for Make Tech Easier. Over the years, he has grown a reputation for publishing quality guides, reviews, tips, and explainer articles. His work is featured on top websites, including Technical Ustad, Windows Report, and Next of Windows. He has training as a Microsoft Certified Professional and has covered more Microsoft-related guides on these platforms.

• You can easily customize templates, add graphics, and animate slides without needing extensive design skills.
• Canva’s collaboration features allow for real-time editing and sharing of presentations.
• Canva provides various export options, including PDF, PPTX, MP4, and image formats.

How to Create Canva Presentations

To create Canva presentations, you must follow a few steps. We break them down into the headings below.

Pick Up an Aspect Ratio and Template

Pick a relevant aspect ratio for your presentation. If it’s a traditional PPT, go with a 16:9 aspect ratio. If you plan to show your PPT on mobile, use the 9:16 aspect ratio. Tablet users can start with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Canva also offers some ready-to-use templates to get started. We highly recommend starting with a template to save some time.

Step 1: On the left pane, click Templates .

Step 2: Choose a template from the options or search for one using the search field.

Step 3: Click Customize this template once satisfied with your choice.

Note: You can filter templates via style, theme, feature, and color. For example, you can check company, marketing, corporate, marketing, school, and other templates. Under templates, you also find an option to create instant presentations. You can enter a prompt and check Canva’s suggestions to get started.

Customize a Page With Editing Features

Once you select a template, you can add all pages to your presentations and customize other pages.

Step 1: To select a page for customization, click on it at the bottom of the interface.

Step 2: At the bottom of the interface, click the three-dot icon for a page and select any of the available options.

Step 3: When you click on a page, Canva lets you change every aspect of the template with different text styles, filters, and image editing tools. You can change color, tweak transparency, copy style, and more.

We suggest editing tools to customize your Canva presentation and add personal touches.

Add Graphics, Stickers, and Images

Your presentation will not seem attractive without graphics, stickers, images, and videos. Unlike Google Slides or PowerPoint, you don’t need to import media files to Canva to complete your slides. You can easily add relevant elements from the sidebar.

Step 1: Open a slide in your Canva presentation.

Step 2: Select Elements from the sidebar. You can add graphics, icons, stickers, tables, videos, and more.

Step 3: You can explore the AI image generator and turn your creative ideas into images and videos with a single click.

You can add simple descriptions and even turn generated images into videos. Canva also offers a long list of graphics packs in several categories. The possibilities are endless here. It’s up to you to make a compelling slide using useful tools.

Tweak Page Animation

Once you create a page, tweak its animation to smoothly transition between pages.

Step 1: Select a slide in Canva.

Step 2: Click Animate at the top.

Step 3: Check Basic , Exaggerate , Photo Movement , and other animation types from the left sidebar.

You can also tweak the animation intensity, which is great.

Add Presenter Notes

Do you plan to present your Canva PPT on a video conference? You can add notes to each slide so they appear during the Presenter view (more on that later).

Step 1: When you create a PPT, select a slide and hit Notes at the bottom.

Step 2: Enter the notes you want to remember or discuss during a video meeting.

Collaborate and Edit in Real Time

Like Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint, Canva lets you share and edit a presentation in real-time. You can take your colleagues’ input and create a share-worthy presentation quickly.

Step 1: When you are done making changes to your presentation, click Share at the top.

Step 2: Enter people, groups, or your team. Expand the collaboration link menu and select Anyone with the link .

Step 3: Expand the permission menu and select Can edit .

You can also share a link with view or comment-only permission. Select the Copy link and share it with your co-workers.

Enable Presenter View or Download and Share Your Presentation

Presenter view is a thoughtful touch from Canva to give presentations over a Google Meet or Teams call.

Step 1: Open a presentation in Canva and select Present at the top.

Step 2: Click Presenter View and check two windows opening up on your computer.

One window shows your presentation with notes open on the sidebar. Another window displays the current slide you are sharing with others over a call.

As expected, Canva offers several options for sharing and exporting your presentation. When you complete your presentation, click Share in the top-right corner and expand Download .

You can convert a presentation to PDF, PPTX (Microsoft PowerPoint compatible), MP4, JPG, PNG and SVG formats. Check our dedicated post if you wish to print your Canva presentation .

1. Can you customize a PowerPoint presentation (.PPTX) in Canva?

Yes, you can customize a PowerPoint presentation (PPTX) in Canva. You will need to upload the presentation, edit it, customize your slides, and then download it.

2. Can you edit a Canva presentation in the Microsoft PowerPoint?

Yes, you can edit a Canva presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. You will need to download it from Canva, open it in Microsoft PowerPoint, edit the presentation, and save your changes.

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Last updated on 27 August, 2024

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How to create a Canva presentation and edit in PowerPoint

• April 28, 2023
• Last updated: November 18, 2024

So maybe you've heard about Canva and want to check out the templates, but feel overwhelmed at the prospect of learning how to use a new tool? Wondering can you convert Canva to PowerPoint? Great news - you can generate a template and start a presentation in Canva, then export it to PowerPoint to edit further.

This blog post provides a step by step guide for how to create presentations in Canva and export to PowerPoint for editing.

Step 1: How to create templates in Canva

Once you arrive on the Canva landing page,  you want  to select ‘Presentations’. This will take you to a view where you can select your presentation format.  For our example I’m selecting the Presentation 16:9 layout, because it is a size directly compatible with PowerPoint.

Canva has a lot of presentation templates and a feature to let you rapidly set up the templates even to customize the content structure.

Next I can select from available templates.  I could create a new presentation from scratch, but the point of this is to leverage a Canva template as a starting point that I can complete in PowerPoint.  I’ve selected a Real Estate template in this example.

Canva gives me the option to use all slides in the template, or to select specific slides.  I’m going to start by using all slides so that I have them when I export.

Using Canva’s Magic Design feature

Rather than selecting a template as per the steps above, Canva also now has a Magic Design option.  When you use Magic Design, you can enter the words to describe what your presentation is about.  Based on this, Canva can generate a specific template as a more customized starting point.   If you find an existing template that strongly aligns to your presentation intent then you may not need Magic Design.  But if you cannot see a template that matches your needs, this is a great option. 

For the Magic Design template I’m going to ask Canva for a ‘Consulting services proposal template’.

Canva generates several variant options based on what I have typed into the Magic Design prompt.

Admittedly most of them are not great, but we can do some further quick customizations.  However I can also revise my prompt to see if I can improve the relevance of the results.  For the following option I selected ‘start again’ and then I changed the prompt to ‘Strategy Consulting Services proposal for banking industry .  From this search I got new template options, as follows:

I’m getting curious now about the prompts, so I’ve revised it again in the following example, to Strategy Consulting Proposal for Fintech .

Refining the search terms slightly seems to have changed the main graphic used in the variant.  Ok, I’ll use this as my starting point for a template and do a few further customizations before I export it.

Once I select it, Canva loads the template into the editing view.  Note that because Magic Design is still in Beta, there is an annotation that the technology is still new and improving (this review was completed in April 2023).

Once I click on any of the slides in my chosen template, the screen will refresh with some editing options.  We can change the colors and images.

If you select to recolor a slide, a “Change all” button dynamically appears.

Note that if you primarily work with PowerPoint, the way that the Canva left hand panel of options dynamically changes can be confusing. 

Once you’re happy with colors, another option to explore is Layouts.  You can add more layouts to your presentation before you export it, to save time when you add / update the rest of your content.

Step 2: How to export Canva template to PowerPoint

Note that if you want to export your presentation to PowerPoint, there’s no point playing with the Canva Animations, as these will not come across when the file is converted.

Now that we’ve got a reasonable template, let’s export it to PowerPoint.  It’s a bit trickier than you would expect – looks like Canva is trying to hide the PowerPoint option.   To find it, click the Share button on the top right hand corner and you will see the following options.....

But you can Scroll down…

You would think that the Download menu would be the next step, but it’s not there!  Instead click on the … More menu

And scroll down (yes, very hidden!!)

Here it is! Canva has a save as Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation button in the More... section. Click this option and follow the prompts to save.

Step 3: Open your Canva Template in PowerPoint

Now that you have downloaded your Canva template to PowerPoint, you can open your presentation file in PowerPoint.

You should find that all text, images and colors can be updated or deleted.

It's important to note that when you import a Canva file into PowerPoint, it does not import the slides with a template into PowerPoint's template format. This means your slides are using a PowerPoint 'blank' template with images and color backgrounds over the top. If you want to insert a new slide into your presentation, the easiest way to do this is to use Ctrl + D to insert a duplicate of the slide with the relevant layout and then move and edit the slide.

But aside from the template constraint, you can edit the slides as you would a normal PowerPoint presentation.

Troubleshooting when converting Canva Presentation to PowerPoint

There are several limitations when you download Canva Presentations to PowerPoint:

• Templates and themes: If you are downloading a presentation from Canva to use as a presentation in PowerPoint,  it will not have a template or theme set up for it.  However if you are using Canva to create a template, this will not be as much of an issue.  Refer to the section below for how to convert Canva template to a PowerPoint template
• Animations : As noted above, animations do not come across when you download a Canva presentation to PowerPoint
• Colors : When you download a presentation from Canva to PowerPoint, because there is not a template set up in PowerPoint for your presentation, you will not have easy access to the color palette that you downloaded from Canva. However if you are using PPT Productivity PowerPoint add-in , you can use the eyedropper feature on the Color Toolbar to select and save the colors from your presentation, making it much easier to reuse them if you need to make further updates.

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Home Blog Design How to Use Canva and PowerPoint for Presentations

How to Use Canva and PowerPoint for Presentations

Creating the perfect presentation design is a challenge that speakers often aim to achieve, only to find themselves lacking graphic design knowledge. Although high-tier options like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator help users worldwide to put their ideas into pixels, the reality is they are not user-friendly interfaces for people outside the graphic design industry, namely business professionals, marketers, and educators. Hence, the need to find an alternative for making powerful graphics to use in our presentations – and here’s where Canva comes into the picture.

This web-based graphic design tool has quickly become the preferred choice of teachers, social media influencers, and small business owners due to its free-tier plans and pro plans at a convenient subscription-based fee. 

In this article, we will see how to use Canva presentation in PowerPoint and how to export Canva to PPT, to create visually appealing presentations.

Table of Contents

Canva vs. Microsoft PowerPoint: Pros and Cons for Presenters

Designing with canva, how to export a canva presentation to powerpoint, how to use canva-made graphics in powerpoint, final words.

Although presenters often see Canva as an alternative to PowerPoint, the reality is that they differ in one single aspect: Canva is a graphic design tool, whereas PowerPoint is a presentation design software. Some of the tools available in PowerPoint are not there in Canva, and vice versa.

Going into more technical aspects, here are the Pros and Cons of working with either software as a presenter.

Pros of Canva as a Presentation Tool

User-friendly interface.

Canva’s drag-and-drop feature makes it easy for non-designers to create presentations by using its library of shapes, graphics, text styles, and other resources.

Wide Range of Templates

It offers a vast library of Canva templates, which can be easily customized in their online editor, saving time on design. There’s a con associated with this point, which we shall discuss later.

Magic Studio for Canva was released mid-Q3 this year with the idea of powering designs with AI tools. This tool is available in Canva search features and in the editor at the bottom right corner, which features the list options:

• AI text generation
• Suggested graphics to match your design
• Suggested photos to match your design

Collaboration Feature

Allows multiple users to simultaneously work on the same presentation, which is great for small team projects. Compared with PowerPoint, it does not require all users to be Premium to collaborate online.

Web-Based Platform

Being an online platform, it allows users to work from any device with Internet access without needing software installation. This particularly helps users with legacy computers who cannot install current versions of Microsoft Office. 

Integrated Stock Library

Provides access to a broad selection of stock photos, illustrations, and icons within the platform. Just like with the Canva templates, there’s also a con to this point.

Customization Options

Users can upload images and fonts, enabling brand consistency across presentations. Note: The upload fonts feature is only available for Canva Pro users.

Photo Editing and Animation Features

Canva lets users tweak their graphics with simple-to-use controls. These options help us to adjust opacity, apply photo filters, add animation effects, add bevels and shadows, and more.

Cross-Platform Compatibility

Can export presentations to various formats (as a PDF document, as a video presentation in MP4 format, or even as images), making them viewable on different devices and platforms. The export options allow us to post directly into social media, create printables, post to the web, etc. While some export formats require an upgrade to a Canva Pro subscription (like the ability to export to SVG format), the basic export features are enough for simple presentations and beginners.

Cons of Canva as a Presentation Tool

Limited offline functionality.

Requires an internet connection for full functionality, which can be a limitation in areas with poor connectivity, for business people working on an airline flight, while using Airplane mode, or for people traveling in other zones without Internet access.

Fewer Animation and Transition Options

Unlike PowerPoint, the available options for animations and transitions are limited. Users can find this reiterative, which may be unappealing to using these effects in our presentations. 

Premium Content

Although the Canva library is extensive in terms of assets, the reality is that most of these elements are only available for premium users. This applies to templates, shapes, images (mostly), and exporting options. Resizing the graphics you create in Canva to repurpose your design is only available to premium users.

Template Overuse

Popular templates can be overused, making presentations look similar to many others. This is of particular interest to business professionals, as people tend to easily associate some designs as being made with Canva.

Design Decisions

Unlike using a PowerPoint template , you have to work your way with Canva content, as the PPT templates tend to be quite generic and do not offer tools for data representation. Consequently, you have to know how and where to introduce those elements on your own rather than working with a presentation template that already assigned the space for such graphics.

Lack of Advanced Multimedia Integration

Integrating complex multimedia elements like videos is not as seamless as in some desktop applications. You won’t find options to link to source elements; you need to upload the content to your personal Canva library and manually add the resource to the slide. Presenters can also lose third-party integrations via plugins for some multimedia resources.

Pros of PowerPoint as a Presentation Tool

Widespread use and familiarity.

PowerPoint is the leading market tool for presentations, making most audiences and presenters are familiar with it at a basic operational level. This can help us to outsource technical issues quickly rather than aiming to use web-based interfaces to share Canva-created content.

Offline Access

PowerPoint can be used offline, which is ideal for people traveling, areas where the Internet connection is unreliable, or simply because we want to focus on creating the slides rather than facing distractions via the Internet.

Integration with Other Microsoft Office Tools

Seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products like Excel and Word, making it easy to import data and documents. This is ideal for creating complex graphics for data representation, where the content can be synced, importing databases, working with Gantt Charts in software like Microsoft Project, and more.

Also, Microsoft PowerPoint has the same text editing capabilities as Microsoft Word – a striking contrast with Canva’s limited features.

Templates and Design Options

This is PowerPoint’s forte: the capability of using third-party presentation templates, like the ones provided by SlideModel . Users can buy pre-designed slide decks from professional vendors and ease the need to make design-related decisions. On top of that, Microsoft already includes some basic templates with its 365 subscription.

Advanced Features

Offers a broad range of features, including detailed animations and transitions, which can enhance presentations. For example, the ability to work with SVG graphics allows presentation designers to make pixel-perfect presentations without losing image quality. This is available to all users, unlike Canva, which requires a subscription to unlock certain elements.

Multimedia Capabilities

Supports embedding of various multimedia elements like audio, video, and images directly into presentations. You can use hyperlinks to embed content or work with third-party plugins for specific tasks.

Extensive Support and Resources

As a long-established tool, users can find tutorials everywhere, support communities, and additional resources available online.

Cons of PowerPoint for Presenters

Some features can be complex to use, and the interface may be overwhelming for new users. In particular, this is linked to editing PowerPoint Shapes and graphs, working with Slide Master , applying advanced animation effects and so on.

Unlike Canva or Google Slides, PowerPoint requires purchasing Office 365 or a standalone license.

Heavy Files

PowerPoint files, especially those with multimedia content, can become large and difficult to share via email. As a side effect, those heavy files can be complicated to handle in computers that lack sufficient RAM and processing power. Moreover, they require significant free disk space on your PC.

Time-Consuming

Creating a high-quality presentation with custom animations and graphics can be time-consuming. That’s the reason why we highly recommend users work their way with PowerPoint templates, and mix and match designs to create a unique slide deck .

Learning Curve

Users need to invest time in learning the software to fully utilize its advanced features. This applies to both acquiring the knowledge and practicing the skills you learned. And still, for some users, it feels frustrating not to achieve results relatively quickly. 

In this section, we will learn how to use Canva to create graphics for a product presentation. The idea is to create placeholder graphics containing images of a product; then, we will export that content to continue creating our presentation in PowerPoint.

After creating our Canva account, we find ourselves at the Home screen. Go to Templates, and you will see something similar to this UI. 

We can go straight to the Presentations (16:9) option or use the search bar to locate the template we want. In this case, we will opt for that scenario and search “Product.”

The images that show a little crown at the low right corner are premium templates, which means we cannot use them with a free account. We will pick a template that fits the needs of our presentation by clicking over it. At the contextual window that opens, select Customize this template .

The Canva builder may take a bit to load, especially if your internet connection is slow. You will find yourself with a window like this one, opened at the Design tab, which offers alternatives for other templates similar to the one you chose.

The Styles tab allows us to quickly change the layout, altering color themes and fonts. Sometimes, that can suit our needs immediately; sometimes, it requires extra work to customize to our preferences.

We can click on any element in this design and customize its content. Depending on the element type, the options are available for us. For this presentation, we will change the text and images, and alter font color at the button to make it stand out.

Next, it’s time to replace the images. We can drag and drop the image into Canva, or we can go to the Uploads button and add the content from there.

In this case, we’re using DALL-E-generated images for this product presentation, you can also use illustrations, photos, videos, or Midjourney illustrations . Once the images are uploaded, drag and drop them to replace the images in the placeholder areas. To complete this design, we removed the shape that came with the template – you can add a new shape by going to Elements > Graphics .

Learning how to use Canva for PowerPoint is pretty straightforward. Download your Canva design as a PowerPoint presentation, which you can do by accessing your design and going to the top-right corner to locate the button Share . Click on it, and then click on Download .

Under File Type , we will select PPTX , as it’s PowerPoint’s native format. Click on Download , and wait for the process of downloading the file to be completed. Depending on the graphic assets included, it can take a while.

At this point, don’t be surprised if you’ll be prompted to upgrade your Canva plan (if you don’t have a premium account). The reason is that Canva will charge you for exporting what they call premium graphics, and since most of the Canva presentation templates use premium graphics, this will be a limitation when exporting your Canva slides to PowerPoint. 

A simple workaround is removing the premium graphics before exporting from Canva to PowerPoint. Although, take in mind this may affect the overall design of your presentation.

As you can see below, the PowerPoint file is entirely editable. Something to consider is that unless you have the font installed on your computer, PowerPoint will reassign to a generic font.

Remember the design we created before? Well, it’s time to use that image as part of a marketing deck presentation , which will represent a social media post to be used by the marketing team to promote the brand.

The first step is to download the design we created as PNG. We can close Canva after that.

We opened our PPT template, which is the Annual Marketing Plan PowerPoint Template , and customized the PowerPoint theme colors . Go to Insert > Pictures > This Device .

Select the image we created in Canva and upload it here. We will add some image shadow effects via Shape Format, and a textbox below that describes what the image is about.

And that’s how easily we can use graphics from Canva in our PowerPoint presentations. Remember, it’s best to work with PNG images rather than JPG to reduce file size and preserve image quality.

You can invite others to collaborate on your design by sharing a link to the editable design or by adding them via email as team members on your Canva account.

Canva uses standard cloud storage security measures to protect your data, but like any online platform, it’s important to use a strong password and follow good security practices.

There are two methods for this. You can upload a PPT template into Canva via the Canva Homepage by clicking on Projects , and then go to the Uploads folder. Drag and drop or click on Upload, as we’ve seen before. Once imported, you must click on that file to open it in the Canva editor. The second method is on the editor: go to the Uploads button and upload your PPT file as if it were an image or another media asset.

Yes, you can use SlideModel presentation templates in Canva. As a SlideModel subscriber, you can download .pptx files to import into Canva presentations. This way, you can enjoy the creative slide templates and graphics provided by SlideModel in your Canva presentations

Unfortunately, no, as Canva doesn’t have the same toolset to enable editing functions. That also applies to changing color, so we highly recommend you work with a final PPT file before switching to Canva.

Objects like charts, SmartArt, 3D objects, and WordArt aren’t supported in Canva and won’t be rendered if you upload a slide that contains them.

Yes, all users can download Canva presentations to PPTX format. In case the original Canva design isn’t a presentation file, like a banner or social media post, you won’t be able to resize for that output unless you have a premium account.

Yes, the file must be smaller than 70 MB, and you can import up to 300 slides.

Canva and PowerPoint can collaborate as complementary tools to help presenters overcome the limitations of each individual tool. It takes a while to create your desired workflow, but once that’s accomplished, you can elevate the quality of your PowerPoint or Google Slides presentations with Canva. 

We don’t advise using Canva as an alternative to PowerPoint as the current state-of-the-art indicates it won’t support data representation or other PowerPoint stellar tools that make part of most PPT templates. For more information, check our article about Canva alternatives and how to convert Canva to Google Slides .

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Design, Microsoft PowerPoint Filed under Design

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