If you find it simpler to organize your thoughts in a document than while creating slides, you can outline your presentation in a Word document, Word 98–2004 document, or Rich Text Format (.rtf) file, and then import the outline into PowerPoint to create a presentation based on the outline. PowerPoint uses the heading styles in the outline to create corresponding slide titles and bullet points.
To import an outline into PowerPoint, follow these steps:
In PowerPoint, on the Standard toolbar, click the Open button.
In the Open dialog box, browse to the folder containing the outline document you want to import.
Click the document, and then click Open.
In a very short time, PowerPoint creates a presentation containing slides based on the outline document.
To export an outline from Word, follow these steps:
In the Word document, apply heading styles to the outline elements you want to use in the presentation. Use the Heading 1 style for slide titles, Heading 2 for first-level bulleted list items, and Heading 3 for second-level list items.
On the File menu, point to Send To, and then click PowerPoint.
PowerPoint starts, if it wasn’t already running, and creates a presentation from the outline.
If you want to use the text of a presentation in another program, or edit the presentation content, you can export the presentation outline as an .rtf file. You can open the .rtf file in Word or in a text editor such as TextEdit.
To export a presentation outline, follow these steps:
On the File menu, click Save As (or press Shift+Command+S).
The Save As dialog box opens.
In the Save As box, specify the name of the file.
In the Format list, click Outline / Rich Text Format (.rtf).
Navigate to the folder where you want to store the outline, and then click Save.
PowerPoint saves an outline of the presentation in the designated folder. The original file remains intact.