Problems previewing PowerPoints in Canvas.

[LucasCrosbie]

Hi, I am having some problems when previewing PowerPoints in Canvas. When previewing them, the slides show messed up (texts moved, images out of scale) is there any way to solve this? Thanks in advance.

[gnoack · Accepted solution]

Hi @LucasCrosbie 

I believe this is an issue with the preview generator in Canvas.  There isn't much you can do about if you want to use .pptx files. 

Some alternatives would be to export your PowerPoint as a PDF file and upload that file instead.  The only downside to this option is it will likely result in a file that is not accessible to screen readers. 

Another alternative would be to upload your file to office.com, Google Drive, or other online drive, then share the link to it in your course with the share setting set to "anyone with the link can view".  This has the downside that the file resides outside of your Canvas Course, and it is likely students can download it. 

There are a few other ways to export or share files, perhaps one of those would work for you. 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/export-a-presentation-6ee4272e-8f64-47f6-bd32-12fe50eef47...

[darren_barnett7]

Is this something that Canvas won't be fixing? It feels like a pretty fundamental issue if it doesn't effectively support PowerPoints in preview any more! It would be good to know as I can tell staff here.

[CynthiaEdwards1]

@darren_barnett7 I totally agree with you. This definitely needs to be fixed by Canvas!

[jch5251]

Any update on this issue? I just had a course that one of my team members is putting accessible PPTs in, do the same thing.

[CraigVD3]

This is a consistent issue with every class I have that uses powerpoint. Is canvas's stance to simply ignore the issue? That seems insane to be. Text completely overlaps each other and makes it near impossible to fully glean the information from classes if I miss a lecture. Every slide across multiple classes share the same issue, text is too large for the text box that its in and it doesn't scale properly when displayed on canvas. This issue is NOT solved. The "solution" is to not use your platform?? Why not fix it for every user? I double checked if its an issue with resolution or app scaling size and nothing helped the issue. Its consistently your platform.