How to convert a PDF to Google Slides (and keep it editable)

Someone sent you a PDF and you need it in Google Slides. Maybe it's last year's deck that only survived as a PDF, maybe it's a report you want to present. The catch: Slides won't open a PDF. To convert a PDF to Google Slides, you turn it into a PowerPoint file first, which Slides opens without complaint, and you end up with slides whose text you can click into and edit.

Can you upload a PDF to Google Slides?

You can store a PDF in Google Drive, but Slides can't turn it into slides. What Slides imports is PowerPoint (.pptx) files and other Slides presentations. So the question is really what you need the PDF for:

• Editable slides: convert it to PowerPoint, then import. That's the main route below.
• An exact picture of a page: save pages as images and insert them.
• Just a reference: link to the PDF from a slide.

Convert a PDF to editable Google Slides

First, get a PowerPoint file out of the PDF:

1. Open PDF to PPT and drop your PDF on the box that says Drag & Drop or Choose File to Upload, or click it and pick the file.
2. The PDF opens in our PDF editor. If there are pages you don't want as slides, now's the time: the page thumbnails on the side let you delete or rotate pages.
3. Click the yellow Download button at the top right. PowerPoint (.pptx) sits at the top of the menu. Click it.

Opening and editing the PDF is open to anyone. Downloading the .pptx takes a free account: if you're not signed in, clicking PowerPoint asks you to sign in or sign up first.

Then get it into Google Slides. There are two ways, depending on whether you want a new presentation or want to add to one you already have.

Into a deck you already have: in Google Slides, open the presentation and go to File > Import slides. Upload the .pptx, pick the slides you want (or all of them), and import them.

As a new presentation: upload the .pptx to Google Drive (New > File upload), then right-click it and choose Open with > Google Slides. It opens in Slides, ready to edit and share.

What to check after the import

A PDF is a finished page, not a set of slides, so the conversion is rebuilding something. Give the result a quick look before you present it:

• Fonts. If the PDF used a font Slides doesn't have, Slides swaps in another one. Spacing and line breaks can shift, so watch for text spilling out of its box.
• Text in pieces. A paragraph can arrive as several small text boxes, sometimes one per line. It still looks right, but editing a long paragraph is easier if you merge it back into one box.
• Tables and charts. These often come in as shapes, lines and text rather than a table or chart you can edit. A PDF only stores what the chart looked like, not the numbers behind it. If you need to change a chart, rebuild it in Slides.
• Slide size. A portrait page (a letter-size report, say) doesn't fit a widescreen slide well. You can change the presentation's shape under File > Page setup, or crop and rearrange the content that matters.

PDFs that started life as presentations (exported from PowerPoint, Keynote or Slides) convert best, because their text is still real text and their pages are already slide-shaped. If you're converting a deck someone exported to PDF, you're in luck.

Scanned PDF? Make the text real first

A scanned PDF is a photo of a page. There's no text in it, just a picture of text, so there's nothing for the converter to turn into editable text.

Quick test: open the PDF and try to select a word. If you can't, run it through OCR PDF first. That turns the picture of text into real text you can select and copy. Then take the result to PDF to PPT and carry on from step 1.

Just need a page to show? Insert it as an image

Sometimes you don't want to edit anything. You want one chart, a flyer or a page of a report on a slide, looking exactly like it does in the PDF. For that, skip PowerPoint:

1. Drop the PDF on PDF to JPG. It opens in the PDF editor, where you can delete the pages you don't need.
2. Click Download and choose JPG. You get a .zip with one JPG per page. Unzip it.
3. In Google Slides, go to Insert > Image > Upload from computer and pick the page you want.

Nothing reflows and no fonts get swapped, because it's a picture. The flip side is that you can't edit the text. You can still crop it, resize it and put your own text box on top.

Or link to the PDF

For handouts, long documents or anything nobody needs to see on screen, leave the PDF as a PDF. Upload it to Google Drive, set its sharing so your audience can open it, and add a link to it on a slide with Insert > Link.

What about add-ons?

There are Google Slides add-ons that convert a PDF without leaving Slides. The one at the top of the search results has catches: it converts only a few pages at a time, gives you a handful of free pages before you start paying, and asks for access to your presentations. If that trade works for you, fine. If not, the PowerPoint route above gets you to the same place.

For file size limits and what each tool needs an account for, see What Each PDF Tool Does.