Free PowerPoint Viewers from Microsoft & Others

PowerPoint has become such a well-known presentation tool that it’s almost indispensable. It has lots to offer, and there is no indication of any slowdown in its usage anytime soon.

This is a great thing for those who create presentations. However, it could make life difficult for those who do not have PowerPoint. It is a fact that Microsoft PowerPoint is on over one billion computers around the world. You’ll probably get a PowerPoint Presentation file you need to review. If you’ve received the PPT file, you may not be willing to buy Microsoft PowerPoint to open the file or request access.

There’s no reason to be concerned about viewing PowerPoint files anymore. It is not necessary to have PowerPoint to be installed on your PC to edit or open the PowerPoint document. There are a variety of ways to access them for free.

Microsoft offered you to open PowerPoint documents using a PowerPoint viewer tool. However, it was limited features. So, what do we do now? We’ll go through every possible option and start dealing with PowerPoint Error – “PowerPoint cannot open the type of file represented by filename.ppt” easily.

Microsoft Free PowerPoint Viewer

PowerPoint Viewer is a free download from Microsoft. You can visit the Microsoft site and download then install the application. It allows you to open, browse, and print out presentations, but it isn’t able to modify them.

Viewers can access all versions of PowerPoint after the 1997 version. It is able to access all PowerPoint documents including .ppt, .pptm .pptx, .pot, .potm, .potx, .ppsx, .pps, & .ppsm. It also does not have any conflict against any other version of PowerPoint on computers. If PowerPoint is installed, the complete PowerPoint program will start when you click on PowerPoint files, not Viewer.

There are a few issues with Viewer. The first is that it was developed to work with PowerPoint 2010. It is also compatible with the versions of PowerPoint (i.e., PowerPoint 2013 & PowerPoint 2016). However, any features created post-2010 may not appear in your Presentation.

In addition, the Viewer has been discontinued is, and it isn’t getting updated. And it will be removed completely in the near future. This means that it won’t be accessible to download.

Microsoft’s Free PowerPoint Viewer

1. Visit the Microsoft Download Center and click on the Download button to download the free PowerPoint viewer. The software is able to view all versions of Microsoft PowerPoint, including 2010.
2. Select the Save button to save the PowerPointViewer.exe to your hard drive.
3. Click Open when the download is complete and double-tap the PowerPointViewer.exe to install the Viewer.
4. Go through the terms and conditions agreement provided by Microsoft. Tap on the License Agreement box, and then click Continue. Follow the screen instructions for installing the Viewer on your PC.
   
5. Start the Viewer, and then browse your hard drive to locate the PPT file you wish to open. Double-click on the file’s name to launch the PPT file within the Viewer.

PowerPoint Mobile Apps

Microsoft also offers PowerPoint for mobile users. There’s an app available for Android, iPhone, iPad and Windows 10 devices. The Microsoft Office app for Android and iOS also comes with PowerPoint, Word and Excel.

Just like the online PowerPoint viewer, this app allows you to login using your Microsoft account. So you will be able to access all the files stored in your OneDrive account. It also includes the ones stored on your personal device and the ones saved to different cloud-based storage platforms (like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.). Also, you can edit, save and print the file.

PowerPoint Online

If already have a Microsoft account such as msn.com, outlook.com, or live.com, you can access and edit your presentations free using your browser.
Prior to starting, you must save your file or document to Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Then use PowerPoint on the web to open it.

OpenOffice

It is possible to use the OpenOffice presentation software, Impress, to open PPT documents.

1. Go the OpenOffice site and click on the “I Want to Download OpenOffice” link.
2. Select Download Apache OpenOffice to download the OpenOffice suite. You cannot download Impress as a stand-alone application. Select Save to download OpenOffice and press Run to install the software.
3. Double-click on the Home OpenOffice icon on your desktop, and then click Presentation. Select the Open Existing Presentation radio button.
4. After that, click Open. Browse to the location of your PowerPoint file and then hit Open to see the PPT file. With Impress, you are able to not only see the presentation, but also modify it.

Thus, we can access our PowerPoint presentations, view them, edit them, make a final copy, and more.

But what if your PowerPoint file becomes corrupt. All work goes in vain. No need to panic; there is a reliable PowerPoint repair tool. It is the Recoveryfix for PowerPoint Recovery tool. Using this tool, you can repair severely damaged PowerPoint files with important slides that contain texts, sounds, images, and objects. We have it as the master tool that will fix all your PowerPoint-related problems.

The Bottom Line

In this blog, we got to know every related aspect of Microsoft’s Free PowerPoint Viewer. Additionally, we got some alternatives for viewing the PowerPoint files without installing PowerPoint. We hope you got all the info you came for. As a bonus, we advise you to keep the Recoveryfix for PowerPoint tool on your system. It is free to download and easy to use.