Recently, my friend Tiffany wrote me to tell me she was having trouble finding a free and easy way to view PowerPoint files.
I inherited a brand new Windows 7 All-in-One with touch screen … One of my complaints is that I can’t view a PPS on it, and I’ve tried downloading links (from several places found on Google) to get a PPS viewer, not one of them worked. Do you know of a place where I can get just the viewer, that will work on 7?
Microsoft PowerPoint is the most used slideshow tool in the world. Even though you’ve probably seen PowerPoint slideshows and know what they are, I’d bet there are still a few of you that don’t know what to do when you get an email with a PPTX attachment in it.
Some of the file extensions associated with Microsoft PowerPoint are .ppt, .pptx, .pptm, .pot, .potx, .potm, .pps, .ppsx and .ppsm.
PowerPoint Viewers
I’ve kept you waiting long enough. Here’s a list of free PowerPoint viewers. In many cases, you can also edit as well as view.
* The apps that can edit PowerPoint files have an asterisk in front.
Windows
PowerPoint Viewer 2007 (Microsoft)
PowerPoint Viewer 2010 (Microsoft)
*Open Office or *LibreOffice
Mac
PowerPoint 98 Viewer (Microsoft)
Linux
Web
*Google Docs and Google Docs Viewer
*Zoho Office and Zoho Viewer
*Slideshare and many others
Conclusion:
As you can see from the list above, there are plenty of alternatives to the full version of PowerPoint. If you only need to view files, the PowerPoint Viewers from Microsoft are the simplest to use. The free office suites, such as Open Office give you lots of options to create and share slideshows. For some, the best alternatives are free web services, such as Google Docs or Slideshare. Users of Mobile devices such as iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or iPad, may not find any free apps for presentations, but they can probably use some of the free web viewers.
