How to open and edit a .pptx file on a Mac without PowerPoint

You can open and edit a .pptx file on a Mac without buying PowerPoint. This guide goes through each way to do it, with what is already on your Mac or free to download, the exact steps for each, and what each way cannot do. At the end it says what our app Deck adds.

In the Finder, with Quick Look

Quick Look offers a fast, full-size preview of nearly any kind of file without opening the file, in Apple’s words. It works on items in Finder windows, on the desktop, in emails and messages, and other places, and Apple’s developer documentation says Quick Look can generate previews for common file types, including iWork and Microsoft Office documents.

In the Finder, select the file, then press the Space bar. A Quick Look window opens.
To open the file in an app from the preview, click “Open with [App]”.
Press the Space bar again or click the close button to close the Quick Look window.

This is a preview only. Apple’s Quick Look page lists rotating, Markup and trimming audio or video as the edits available in the Quick Look window, and it lists no way to change the contents of a presentation.

The page does not name .pptx specifically; the statement that Microsoft Office documents can be previewed comes from Apple’s developer documentation, which adds nothing about how faithful the preview is.

In Keynote, which converts the file

Keynote opens and edits Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, files with a .pptx or .ppt filename extension, and can save them as Keynote or PowerPoint presentations. If you don’t have Keynote on your Mac, you can get it from the App Store. Opening a PowerPoint file in Keynote converts it, and the original file remains intact after you convert it.

Drag the PowerPoint presentation to the Keynote icon in the Dock or the Applications folder (double-clicking the file opens PowerPoint if you have that app). Or in Keynote choose File > Open, select the file, then click Open.
Edit the presentation in Keynote.
To get a PowerPoint file back, choose File > Export To > PowerPoint (File > Export To > [file format], from the File menu at the top of your screen).
Click Save, type a name, choose a location in the Where pop-up menu, then click Export.

Keynote works on a converted copy: the .pptx is converted when opened, and a PowerPoint file comes back only by exporting a copy. Apple warns a converted file may have missing fonts or look different in other ways. When a presentation uses fonts not installed on the Mac, a missing font notification appears, and replacements are chosen with Format > Font > Replace Fonts.

Apple’s conversion article, published January 28, 2026, gives another route: with the file open, click the Share button in the toolbar, click Export and Send, then choose PowerPoint. Keynote can also export to PDF, images, animated GIF, movie and HTML (Mac only).

In Google Slides, in the browser

When you upload Office files to Google Drive, you can edit, comment and collaborate directly on them with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. All changes are auto-saved to the file in its original Office format, so the file stays a .pptx while you work on it.

On your computer, go to drive.google.com.
At the top left, click New, then File Upload, and choose the file. (You can also drag the file into a Google Drive folder.)
In Google Drive, double-click the Office file. It opens in Google Slides.
Edit the file. Changes are saved to the file in its original Office format.

The file has to be uploaded to Google Drive first, and the editing happens in Google’s web apps, not on the Mac. Google lists what is not supported when editing Office files in Docs, Sheets or Slides: macros; embedded charts and videos in Word and PowerPoint files will be converted to images; SmartArt images will be converted to Google Drawings.

Converting is a separate, optional step, and when you convert, you make a copy of your Office file. One caution from Google’s help: password-protected Office files can be opened in Edit mode only for .docx, .pptx and .xlsx, and choosing Edit removes the password from the file for all users.

In LibreOffice Impress

LibreOffice is free and open source software; its site says it provides unfettered access to its office productivity tools, at no cost to you. It can open and save documents in the Microsoft Office file formats, including Microsoft Office Open XML formats, and Microsoft PowerPoint .ppt, .pps and .pptx files open in LibreOffice Impress. Its stated requirements for a Mac are macOS 11 or newer and an Intel or Apple silicon processor.

Install LibreOffice from libreoffice.org.
Choose File - Open, then select the Microsoft Office file in the LibreOffice file open dialog. It opens in LibreOffice Impress.
To keep the Microsoft format when saving, choose File - Save As and, in the File type box, select a Microsoft Office file format.

LibreOffice’s help says some layout features and formatting attributes in more complex Microsoft Office documents are handled differently in LibreOffice or are unsupported, so converted files require some degree of manual reformatting. For Microsoft PowerPoint it lists these features as ones that may cause conversion challenges: AutoShapes; tab, line, and paragraph spacing; master background graphics; grouped objects; and certain multimedia effects.

With a few exceptions, Microsoft Office and LibreOffice cannot run the same macro code. The help pages quoted here are labelled LibreOffice 26.8 Help.

With Deck

Deck is a presentation app for the Mac that works the way people know from PowerPoint, and .pptx is its native format, written and read by Deck’s own code. A file made in another app opens as an untitled copy, with a line under the ribbon saying so, and saving asks for a new place, so the original is never overwritten by a version with less in it. A saved deck keeps its slides, layouts, placeholders, text and formatting, bullets, shapes, lines, pictures with cropping, tables, links, notes, theme, slide size, slide numbers and transitions, and it can export a PDF with one slide to a page and real text, or render slides to PNG.

Deck does not keep everything from files made in other apps. Charts, SmartArt and embedded objects appear as a grey box marked Chart, Diagram or Object; animations, comments and custom shows are dropped; sound and video keep only the still picture. Transitions other than Fade and Push are shown and saved as Fade, groups are opened up into separate objects, merged table cells are shown unmerged, and shadows, glows, reflections, 3-D, picture effects and recolouring are not shown and not saved. Fonts the Mac does not have are shown in a stand-in, Calibri as Helvetica Neue and Cambria as Georgia.

Deck costs $19 once, in US dollars, tax included, and it is free for 7 days with no card. One licence covers up to 3 of your Macs, every future update is included, and refunds are available within 30 days; there is no subscription and no account. It requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Once the trial has ended, documents still open and can be edited, but saving, exporting and printing ask for a licence.

Try Deck free for 7 days.

Then $19 once, for up to 3 of your Macs. No subscription and no account.

Download Deck Buy · $19 About Deck

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later.

Sources

Checked on 13 November 2026.