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PPT - Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation File

What is a PPT file

PPT is the binary file format for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 97-2007. Presentations using PowerPoint can include images, text, audio, video, charts, graphs, hyperlinks, and animation to provide presentations created for students and businesses. Most people are aware of PPT and how to create, save, send, and open this type of files. Microsoft Office Suite launched PowerPoint in 1990 despite the program originally being a Mac program. There are controversies as to how useful and effective the program is but most issues with PowerPoint come from the users' end, not the program itself. Many users do not know how to properly utilize the program and PPT file to the best of their advantage, so presentations are often seen as dry and boring.

PPT files contain various slides or pages containing various types of information and input. Overall, the presentation works much like one created using a slide projector or foils (using overhead projectors). Items on each slide can be edited and moved around freely. Using PowerPoint, PPT documents can be printed out for review as well as displayed and navigated on a computer or projector connected to said computer, or online. At the creation of Microsoft Office 2007, the PPT file was replaced by the PPTX file extension which changed from the binary base to the XML Office Open XML format, allowing the open standard to be the default.

Here's a small, but not exhaustive list of programs that can open PPT documents:

  • Apple Keynote
  • LibreOffice
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • OpenOffice