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Can I upload slides (PowerPoint or Keynote) into a topic?
Can I upload slides (PowerPoint or Keynote) into a topic?

There are several elements (Embed, Video, Narration, Download) that allow you to show slides (or Power Point) within a topic.

Lou Monsour avatar
Written by Lou Monsour
Updated over 5 months ago

If you have an existing set of slides, perhaps from a workshop or other training situations, you may want to either use or recreate those slides in your topic.

You cannot directly upload PowerPoint or Keynote slides into a Tribal Habits topic for viewing by explorers. Slide decks are complex and large and often in formats which cannot be natively displayed in a web browser. Slide decks usually require some sort of conversion to be displayed online in a browser.

Let's consider a few options to work with PowerPoint or Keynote slides in a Tribal Habits topic.

Option 1 - Using your slides as they are

The first option is just to use your slides as they are. Your slides can display the content to learners. You may then choose to add some interactions - like polls or quizzes - around your slide deck in your topic. This is often a good way to quickly get started or when you are time poor, but keep in mind that passively reading slides online isn't always the most engaging experience for learners!

Here are some options you could use to display slides within a Tribal Habits topic.

  • Embed. Our Embed element supports a variety of ways to display slides which have been uploaded into an external slide hosting service. A good example of this is SlideShare. You can upload your slides into SlideShare and then paste your SlideShare embed link. Slide sharing platforms like this may also support animation and transitions in your slides. There are other platforms similar to SlideShare too. Remember, you can only use the embed element to embed slides from a public embed link (so not from Dropbox or OneDrive which don't embed the slides, but merely hold the file).

  • PDF. Our PDF element allows you to display a set of PowerPoint or Keynote slides that have been saved as a PDF. This is perhaps the easiest way to just show a set of slides for a learner to scroll through. Note that animations and transitions are not displayed in a PDF.

  • Video. PowerPoint and Keynote make it easy to record a video voice-over of you talking through your slides. You just need a microphone and to record your slideshow with voice over directly in PowerPoint or Keynote. You can then export your slideshow as a video and upload it using the Video element in your topic. This is a fantastic way to get your slides into Tribal Habits, including your animations, transitions and voice over.

  • Download. You can upload your slide deck as a Download element in Tribal Habits and explorers can then download your deck for viewing (either as a PDF or in the native format of the slides). This is a good option if you are not concerned about distribution or re-use of your slides.

  • Narration. The Narration element in Tribal Habits allows you to create an online slideshow, with a voiceover, of up to 10 slides. This wont allow you to display your slides, but to recreate your slide deck either by using text-based slides in Tribal Habits, or exporting your slide deck as images (.jpg or .gif) and uploading those slides into each slide in your Narration. Think of this as a 'slide deck replacement' option.

Option 2 - Replace your slides with elearning content

If your slide deck is large - it represents the entire topic - you should ideally create a new topic based on the content in that deck. That's the purpose of Tribal Habits - to turn your passive slides into interactive learning. This article can help you to prepare slides for transfer into a Tribal Habits topic.

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