Turning pages into editable slides from Layout by Zaweba

A brochure designed for print often ends up in a presentation. The sales team wants the product pages as slides, a speaker wants the conference programme on screen, a report needs a few key spreads shown at a meeting. Layout by Zaweba exports pages to a .pptx file, one editable slide per page, so the design can go straight into presentation software without being rebuilt.

What comes across to the slides

Each page becomes a slide. Text goes across as text boxes, so it can still be edited in the presentation program. Pictures, shapes, tables and groups come across as their own objects. Backgrounds go across too, so a coloured or pictured page background becomes the slide background.

Interactive parts carry over as well. Page transitions become slide transitions, and buttons that jump to a page become jumps to the matching slide. A document set up to run in Presentation screen mode can therefore become a slide deck that behaves the same way.

Effects and how they travel

Objects with effects, such as drop shadows or glows, go across as pictures. That keeps them looking exactly as they did in Layout, which matters for a branded design, but it means those particular objects can't be edited in the presentation program the way plain shapes and text can.

If a piece of text needs to stay editable in the slides, keep effects off it. Put the effect on a separate shape behind the text instead, and the text will go across as a normal text box.

Designing pages that make good slides

Slides are wide. A document set up with a landscape page size, in proportions that match common screens, will turn into slides that fill the screen properly. A portrait A4 page will export too, but it will sit inside a wide slide with space at the sides. If slides are the main purpose, set the page size for them from the start.

Keep text large enough to read across a room. Body text that works at arm's length on a printed page is often too small on a projector.

Use styles for headings and body text. They make the document consistent, and consistent pages make a tidy deck.

Group items that belong together, such as a picture and its caption, so they arrive as a group and are easy to move together in the presentation program.

Mistakes to avoid with slide exports

Expecting every object to be editable is the main one. Effects turn objects into pictures. Plan around that.

Exporting a long document without checking can give a huge deck. Make a cut down copy of the document with just the pages the presentation needs.

Fine print details, such as hairline rules and very small type, can disappear on a projector. Check the slides on a screen before the meeting.

Where slides sit among Layout's outputs

Slides are one of several exports from the same document. The press PDF goes to the printer, an interactive PDF or EPUB goes online, pictures go to social media, and the .pptx goes to whoever needs to present. Building one well structured document and exporting it several ways keeps every version in step with the others.