PRESENTATION SOFTWARE PACKAGE REVIEWS:
New to using slide presentations in conjunction with your Sunday School teaching? If you do not already have a Presentation Software package on your computer, you may find the following testimonies useful.
Below I’ve taken the time to briefly summarize my personal experience with several popular options that may be available to you. Obviously, there are probably dozens of SlideShow software packages out there, so this is by no means complete.
Note: This is not sponsored by anyone other than my own personal experience and workflow views.
If you are looking for actual, methodical, indepth product testing reviews, I have just completed testing for LibreOffice 6.3, SoftMaker 18, and WPS 10.1. These reviews can be found in .PDF form below:
OfficeSuite Comparison – Text Documents
OfficeSuite Comparison – Presentations
M$oft Office – PowerPoint 2013 – Professional PowerHouse presentation software package. I don’t really believe that a ‘review’ is necessary, as it is highly doubtful that you have not heard of this software. It is practically industry standard everywhere you go. Minimal formatting issues between PowerPoint docs and PowerPoint versions. *.ppt and *.pptx are pretty widely used.
However, to convert *.ppt or even more so *.pptx documents for use in other presentation software packages involves a good amount of tweaking and reformatting. Unfortunately, it seems, the ‘open XML standards’ set forth by M$oft are not quite that ‘open’. This is understandable, as OBVIOUSLY it is in the best interest of M$oft to do their best to ensure their product handles it’s own files superiorly to any peer rivals.
If you have the money for M$oft office, go for it. However, I think you will find, as I did, that I didn’t scratch the surface of using 85% of the feature-set available, and found that I was spending more time building my presentation than studying the lesson.
I’ve been using PowerPoint in earnest since the Office ‘97 days. Much has changed and developed over the years. When M$soft switched to the ribbon interface, it took a lot of effort, but I adapted to the new workflow. Obviously, there are newer versions available that boast even MORE features I’d likely never use! While the days of local installed desktop copies of M$oft Office are sunsetting, I will always love the 2007 Version of Office, and it stands out as some of the best software I’ve ever purchased. (I remember when a license to use software lasted indefinitely!)
Pros: Current Commercial Champion! None-better. Its nice to edit your slide notes below WHILE being able to edit your slide above! (Probably the feature I miss the most) Lots of shiny animations and effects. Can be made to do things that the programmers never dreamed their software could do!
Cons: I saved time and money looking elsewhere.
M$oft Office – PowerPoint 365 – With a Professional PowerHouse presentation software package heritage to fall back on, I don’t really believe that a ‘review’ is necessary, as it is highly doubtful that you have not heard of this software. It is practically industry standard everywhere you go. Minimal formatting issues between PowerPoint docs and PowerPoint versions. *.ppt and *.pptx files are pretty widely used.
However, to convert *.ppt or even more so *.pptx documents for use in other presentation software packages involves a good amount of tweaking and reformatting. Unfortunately, it seems, the ‘open XML standards’ set forth by M$oft are not quite that ‘open’. This is understandable, as OBVIOUSLY it is in the best interest of M$oft to do their best to ensure their product handles it’s own files superiorly to any peer rivals.
If you have the money for M$oft office, go for it, and here is where Office 365 shines. You can set up and access a M$oft Office 365 account for free (to use). This is a web-only software package, so an internet connection is required to use, present, or handle M$soft documents. The ‘free’ subscription also includes 5 gigs of cloud storage to put your documents (should you chose to store them there, instead of downloading the *.docx/*.pptx/*.xlsx files to your local storage.)
Office 365 is primarily a subscription based service, so at some point if you feel the need to create and handle documents OFF-LINE, you will want a M$oft 365 (Paid) to access the desktop versions of these world famous industry standard applications. …However, I think you will find, as I did, that I didn’t scratch the surface of using 85% of the feature-set available, and are likely to spend more time building your presentation than studying the lesson.
When it comes to the PowerPoint 365 web app, it behaves and functions VERY much like its desktop cousin. However, I have commonly heard that there are a few features not available in this online Cloud-based edition, so I decided to explore this claim further.
There is a variety of simple, basic templates for presentations (For those who like to have a head-start) but keep in mind, if you would like to access the ‘Premium Themes’, you’ll need to purchase a paid subscription.
Aside from templates, I really did not find very much missing. M$oft has done a quite impressive job of ensuring that the most commonly used functions of PowerPoint are available in their free offering. The animations seem to be present, the transitions seem to be here, and the formatting options all seem to work as expected.
There is a slight UI change that seems to be an amalgamation of M$oft’s own PowerPoint UI and Google Slides, and it is efficient and works well for cloud-based software. The classic ‘ribbon’ can be enabled, or you might take advantage of the screen real estate freed up by getting used to the Google-Slides-Esq Single-Line Ribbon. For better or for worse, in the interest in attempting to de-clutter the classic M$oft UI, the bold application-denoting title-bar colors are gone and changed out for a mostly off-whitish screen with ‘hints’ of the application color on the ‘Share’ button and application menu highlights/icons. It is what it is, and you can’t have the old theme back.
Pros: Current Commercial Champion! None-better. Its nice to edit your slide notes below WHILE being able to edit your slide above! (Probably the feature I miss the most) Lots of shiny animations and effects. You can edit your notes and the slide above it in the same screen/window. Can be made to do things that the programmers never dreamed their software could do! The new Google-Docs-Esq interface is a clean and pleasant UI blend.
Cons: You HAVE to be online, or else you pay for a subscription. If you pay for a subscription, you HAVE to be running Window$ or Appl$OS.
Appl$ iWorks – Keynote ‘08 – Yes, there are newer versions of Keynote. I lived through ‘08 and ‘09 iterations and very much enjoyed using them. It took an adjustment to move from M$oft’s Ribbon UI to handling contextual options appearing on the right of the screen, but it didn’t take too long to get used to the new workflow.
Appl$ did an amazing job packing a host of commercial-grade animations and tools into Keynote. The ability to use slide transitions AS a tool in stead of just a ‘new thought alert’ is STILL a function I miss in many other presentation packages.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the iChains software line, it’s pretty straightforward to funnel ideas and other formats INTO Appl$’s software, but the OUTPUT is practically exclusively proprietorial. (This company was founded on ‘proprietary formats’ and it is a strong part of their legacy. It’s in the company genes, you might say.)
While I absolutely enjoyed the smooth animations and wonderful graphical features, the inability to share my documents with others, or future-proof preserve them left me with a huge collection of lessons that constantly remained in eminent threat of extinction at the mercy of Appl$’s innovation or decision to move to another format! Backwards compatibility is not a strong Appl$ strong suit, as they survive on creating a demand for their new products. Zero support for yesteryear. Everyone, surely, has the $$$ to move ahead!
This threat, combined with the realization that, while I was spending less time PRODUCING a presentation, I was STILL spending more time on the slideshow than necessary and to the end that I may or may not be able to REDEEM that time by having these files accessible by ANY software package in the future prompted me to look elsewhere. It is the sad-but-true tragedy of ‘Walled Gardens’ of any kind.
Pros: Simple, Easy to Use, Smooth Workflow. Uses transitions AS a way to communicate/present rather than an interlude. (Probably the feature I miss the most) Also includes the ability to edit your notes below while working on your slide above!
Cons: Non-Compatable formats. Don’t make enough $$$ to keep up with Appl$’s marketing cattledrive.
SoftMaker Office – Presentations 2018 – Produced in Germany, English may not be the 1st language. However, the product was surprisingly familiar to my M$oft roots! The ability to chose an UI that works best for my workflow was very welcome. Practically flawless compatibility to M$oft document file formats makes for file sharing and future proofing documents a snap!
Like the Ribbon UI? It’s got it. Like the traditional menu interface? Yep, you can choose that too! Sadly, having the choice to pick how you want to interact with your software is downright spoiling! It makes it very hard to pick back up a M$ product again and get stuck in a un-modifiable rut. 😛
If you are familiar with M$oft Office, you will be familiar with SoftMaker office as well. A fraction of the cost, this package hosts a range of the same features found in PowerPoint. Available for Linux/Windows, I am hoping that it runs on Windows smoother than it crashes/freezes on Linux.
The only hiccups I’ve noticed is the much-slower OpenGL slide transitions (which I rarely use anyway) and the inability to drag-n-drop images onto the slide. (you have to ‘insert>image’ and then browse to your image.) On linux (my platform of choice) the UI feels reminiscent of M$oft, rather than ‘native’… (the file selection, save/open dialogs, screen widgets, etc.)
The workflow is only slightly inconvenienced because of this. It VERY much reminds me of Office ‘03 & ‘07 combined. Currently, you have to switch to a ‘notes’ view to edit slide notes. On linux, there were some cases in which it did not display the slide, or thumbnail of the slide, in the notes to reference when making the notes. (A minor inconvenience that hopefully will be changed in the future.)
The Presenter view is quite nice. It preserves the formatting of your notes, as well as offers the option to enlarge or reduce the font size. When the ‘dark mode’ UI is selected, the Presenter view seems much easier to see, as only the notes are backed by white, instead of the entire screen.
CAUTION: Presentations 2018 had some noticeable quirks with reading/writing to the M$ *.ppt/.pptx file format. There were minor issues with the font sizes, slide layouts, and bullet points when reading a fairly basic *.pptx presentation file I sampled from work (created in M$ Office 365). Often times these are caused by font substitutions, but in this case, even some of the graphics failed to even show up on the slide. Opening a *.ppt file creating in LibreOffice yielded in crazy italicized fonts riddled with ‘strikethrough’! (Keep in mind, opening the same *.ppt file in M$Office showed no issues… everything formatted and intact from how it appeared in LibreOffice) When I attempted to ‘correct’ the slides in Presentations ’18, and check my work in M$Office, it was disconcerting to see how many formatting errors there were, as well as all of the slide notes seemed to have been stripped from the file.
While I’m not sure what is going on with that, it should be noted that any presentation created within Presentations ’18 and saved to it’s native format obviously open back up faithfully. Also, any presentations CREATED within Presentations ’18 and saved to *.ppt/.pptx opened fine in M$Office, correctly formatted. Perhaps there is room for improvement on the import modules of the software.
Pros: File format compatibility for PowerPoint is good! The M$ clone UI is very comfortable to use. The ability to switch back and forth between Menu UI or Ribbon UI in both light and dark themes is a wonderful touch.
Cons: It isn’t M$oft office. Needs some polish (on the linux version, anyway. I’m sure it fits right at home on Windows.) On Ubuntu 18.04, I notice that there are FREQUENT ‘pauses’ or ‘hesitations’ that render the program busy, preventing any interaction until it is done doing whatever it was doing. (Save Often!) (For you Linux users, this seemed to be regardless of the DE in use, and affected both GnomeShell and MATE.) This is usually a minor annoyance, as I usually use the interruptions as time to think about the presentation I am building. Attempting to perform excessive interactions with the program while it is in a ‘frozen’ state will only serve to crash the program. Also, the fans kick on when the program starts. The formatting quirks of importing PPT files created in Impress were very odd. I am lead to believe that the ‘import’ modules need some work. No ability to import Open Document formats. LibreOffice does a better job of importing/exporting M$ document formats while preserving layout.
UPDATE FOR 2024: The good folks at Softmaker have been hard at work keeping up with M$oft. There is now a subscription-based version for constant-up-to-date patches, or a one-time purchase version (old school, the way software used to be). This is local, off-line-capable, download and install software.
LibreOffice – Impress 6 – LibreOffice seems to be the standard for the rest of the world, and for good reason, too. It has come such a long way from it’s OpenOffice roots. Available for Linux/Windows/Mac, just about anyone can download and use it! (I understand there is even a WEB-baised version available now) The openDocument format is fairly universal and very much future-proof. (M$oft Offi$e and iWork$ do not currently support this format, however, it is widely recognized by many other office suites, and gaining a strong foothold each passing day.)
It can read/write most formats (Even reads Appl$ Keynote formats to a limited, but startling degree! M$oft can’t do this!). Formatting is not always preserved, but this area is constantly improving. LibreOffice 6 is quite remarkable on how well it does all things considered. And ‘Basically’ talking to everything is better than ‘ignoring that other file formats exist’, in my opinion.
The default UI is very reminiscent of Office ‘03. (old-school menu driven workflow) Fully featured and functional, there is very little that this software suite cannot do. Starting with LibreOffice 6.2, there has been announced an optional ‘Ribbon’ UI after the similitude of M$Office clones, but more on that later.
If you can train yourself to keep your documents down to the more or less basics, your compatibility in file formats increases exponentially! It should be of note that opening presentations created by recent versions of M$ PowerPoint yielded surprisingly good results. The formatting, font sizes, layouts, graphics, translated very nicely inside of Impress. (Better than WPS Kingsoft’s Office v.10 and SoftMaker Office ’18, in fact!)
One thing I found when switching to Impress is that I spend WAY less time in producing presentations. Before, I was building my presentations and slides in Office or Keynote… and this took planning, patience, detail, tweaking, and finetuning/timing. Each slide had to be built or modified, and implementing the multitude of features to enhance flow and eye-appeal took time. However, in OpenOffice, I can prepare (3) or (4) backgrounds in my favorite image editor (like, the universally free Gimp, also available for Linux/Windows/Mac) and just swap the backgrounds as needed. Putting together a template format that I can reuse or quickly re-arrange as needed saved hours upon hours of fiddling, leaving me more time to review my lesson throughout the week and search for relevant articles or stories I want to include or use.
The contextual tools appearing on the right is very reminiscent of Keynote’s workflow and fits well, as does the contextual toolbar across the top. No matter what background you have, Impress will feel somewhat familiar in its workflow.
NOTE: while there IS a quickly developing “Ribbon” UI available, in my version of LibreOffice, it took a little research to enable. The experimental stages seem quite promising and as of version 6.2, it should be a fully functional option for you if, like me, coming from a M$ background is your thing. It is not quite the carbon-copy of M$ Office, but it should be similar enough to help you feel reasonably comfortable on familiar territory. – If it’s any encouragement, the menu/contextual right-panel combination really did not take that long to get back into.
Currently, you must enter a notes view to edit/handle slide notes. This is a minor inconvenience, but at least it shows a slide-preview so you can easily reference WHICH slide you are making notes on.
The ability to compress images while maintaining their clarity and quality helps these *.ODP files to stay small.
All of that said, Impress is still a work in progress. There are a few features that I’d love to see come to Impress. The ‘Transition as a Tool’ approach would be a fine addition. So would speeding up of the transitions and animations in general. (In my opinion, the OpenGL transitions seem sluggishly slow compared to even un-accelerated transitions of M$Office ’07 & ’13). The Presentation mode would also benefit from preserving the formatting of the slide notes. (I might as well be viewing the slide notes in a terminal! 😛 )
NOTE: There ARE workarounds & substitutes for all of these inconveniences, and the support on the LibreOffice forum is phenomenal! ALSO >> Chris Titus produced a wonderfully helpful video on ‘How to Maximize the Compatibility of LibreOffice‘. (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0jeYe8iNWo&feature=youtu.be) His advice is to install the Microsoft Core Fonts and set these to the default. Using compatible fonts that M$Office is expecting to see can go a long way to preserving formatting of your documents, rather than risk the unpredictable changes Office could apply guessing a substitute font & size.
Pros: Universal software makes the file format also universal. Free. Easy to use. Classical menu UI combined with a contextual left-panel and toolbar. Optional Ribbon UI feature coming soon! Lots of features you’ll never need or use, but are certainly available. Rudimentary understanding of just about EVERYONE else’s file formats! Decent results saving to the *.PPT (older PowerPoint file format – can sometimes leave about 15% of formatting to tweak, depending on the design complexity.)
Cons: Mixed results in saving to the newer *.PPTX format. Presenter view is amazingly adjustable, but lacks text formatting of your notes.
UPDATE 2024: Did you know that LibreOffice can run on a chromebook?!? Well, the web-version can, anyway. Yep, there is now a cloud-based version called Collabora Office. It is basically ‘LibreOffice’ that has been cloud-enabled and cloud-accessed. I have not personally tested it yet, but I’m guessing there may be a few feature compromises or trade-offs. If you need a cloud-based Software package, this one might be worth your time looking into.
WPS – Presentation – (Version 10) Seemingly to be a chinese-based knock-off of M$oft office, much is familiar between M$soft 2013 Office and SoftMaker Office 2018. (More so with M$oft’s Office) It is available for all major platforms.
NOTE: This also features a pleasant choice between your UI choices. Menus for us traditional folks, and Ribbons for those who prefer this approach.
One feature that I definitely enjoy is the ability to edit and reference slide notes WHILE working on the slides. This was one feature that I very much missed from M$Office. The ‘Notes’ window is resizable but not collapsible. Still, a nice feature, as I find it is easier for me to view/edit my slide while I type or modify my notes.
File format support is limited to WPS’s own format or M$oft Office ’97-’03. No open document support exists at this time. WPS’s support of the *.pptx format is very good. However, I noticed that there were a number of formatting issues. Bullet points, for example, would be rendered in strange ‘bullets’ (could be a fonts issue) and the text, paragraph spacing, and size might frequently spill outside the slide viewing area. LibreOffice’s Impress seemed to provide a more faithful representation of the intended layout of M$’s PowerPoint files.
The ‘Presenter View’ is very nice, and preserves note formatting very well.
While there aren’t any outstanding or unique features of WPS, what it DOES to, it does exceptionally well, and its strong suite is Microsoft compatibility.
There is also a ‘quick access’ bar that you can add buttons you find yourself constantly looking for or using. That’s pretty helpful.
NOTE: A minor annoyance comes from using WPS as a ‘snap’ package on Linux… its load time seems laggy and the UI seems to be more at home on KDE than Ubuntu. But, Linux users are notoriously fussy about their desktops and widgets, so it’s nothing functional or wrong with the software, and I am very grateful that there is even a snap version even available to use!
Pros: A universal platform approach to WPS should make this a popular choice for many. (They even have an ANDROID version!?!) The support for M$oft’s popular format is quite solid enough for daily use. (Just keep your formatting needs realistic.) The user interface is very nice and works well.
Cons: No open document support. File format support is limited to WPS and Office. Basic animations or templates.
Google Slides – Unfortunately, I cannot comment much on Google Slides, as my exposure and experience with this online presentation package is severely limited.
The focus seems to be on touch-screen smart-phone-types, and it seemed to me to be oriented for tablet users more so than for traditional desktop-types.
I appreciate that it is available for free. (As I do not think I would find myself paying for this, were it offered in a suite form) I also appreciate that many Chromebooks are able to take advantage of options like this in lieu of more professional packages. To it’s credit, though, Google Slides does not claim to be a professional PowerPoint competitor.
I have honestly tried to give this package a bit of a go, but being web-biased is challenging enough… but pile on top the smart-phone-like interface?! I felt like I was trying to build a puzzle with my elbows, and could only see one piece at a time without knowing what the full picture is supposed to be. To be fair, there is a certain Google-Workflow that you must be willing to adopt to become proficient at building presentations.
Keep in mind, not only is this product ‘free’ (to use) but it has its limitations when compared to almost any other presentation package out there. This is not exactly a bad thing, by the way. Simple can also mean ‘Focused’.
Limitation examples, might include not expecting much in the way of animating objects on the slides. Transitions are bare-bones basic. And, I have no idea how much of the slide content is under algorithm scrutiny… so if you are privacy focused/centered, you might do better with another software suite. If you are a Google-fan, you are going to feel right at home.
I DID like that the notes were edited and displayed directly under the slides, allowing access to both at the same time.
Hopefully you might find that it will work better for you than for me.
File Formatting… well, I guess it’s not meant to use *.PPT/.PPTX files. All of the text on the slides were missing when I uploaded a older *.ppt PowerPoint file to test in Google Slides. The rest of the formatting (pictures, notes, graphics, and backgrounds) all seemed to be present… just not the text on the slides. Attempting a newer M$Office 360-created *.pptx file produced MUCH better results. The formatting was intact, text present in a close-enough font. The spacing & font sizes, however, needed tweaking as the text seemed to often spill off the slide. Importing and opening up OpenDocument (Created in LibreOffice, for example) yielded VERY solid results. Text, formatting, fonts, sizes, layout, images were all preserved and translated very well with no issues.
Presenter View – When presenting with Google Slides, a new web window opens up and fills the screen. (You can enable ‘fill the screen’, but ultimately, these are browser windows you are manipulating here.) To enable the Presenter View, click on the appropriate option in the lower left of the screen and watch the ‘Presenter View’ window open. I assume you are supposed to rearrange the presentation/presenter windows to their appropriate screens yourself. The presenter view is quite nice, really. Clean and simple and… basic. The slide notes preserve their formatting.
I did find a ‘Slide Remote’ plugin for Chrome/Chromium that allows you to both see your notes and control the presentation from a smartphone, but this requires an internet connection on both devices. (I read somewhere that guaranteed flawless universal internet connections do not exist everywhere yet… in spite of all the grants and programs congress has thrown as-of-yet-uncollected tax dollars at!)
NOTE: It IS technically possible (again, with a chrome/chromium extension) to both edit, save, and present Google Slides presentations while off-line using, for example, a chromebook. You may run into issues on complicated slides involving inserted videos from YouTube or such like things, but for basic slides, text, graphics, and making points… it works.
Pros: It’s free and universally available. Boasts some pretty basic, but nifty features. Supports the universal OpenDocument file format.
Cons: I think it is meant for smart phones and touch screens. It’s sparse layout STILL winds up making me feel claustrophobic… like viewing the globe through a magnifying glass, it’s hard for me to see and keep the big picture in view.
OnlyOffice – Presentation – Germany seems to be quite the hub for office suites!!! This might be a better choice for many people over WPS office. OnlyOffice is free as a “Desktop Editiors” package. There is also a cloud-based subscription model (which has seen a spike in popularity these days). NOTE: I have not tried the Cloud version. But I understand that it incorporates many of the popular collaboration features touted by suites such as Google Docs and Office 365.
It is a wonderful M$soft competitor that is very similar in many aspects, but not outright knockoff. It features superior handling of the *.docx/*.pptx/*.xlsx file formats (currently better than LibreOffice) and I did not notice any issues whatsoever in importing or saving as native M$office file formats. Its UI is very reminiscent of M$oft Office 2013… Each Application Module (Documents/Presentation/Spreadsheet) has its own application color to help differentiate which document type you are working on.
The ‘Presentations’ module allows for editing of slide notes directly below the slide editor, allowing you to work on both at the same time instead of switching back and fourth with views.
There are a few minor quirks (And these could be just isolated to Linux, by the way) I noticed when using the software. Dragging items from one module/document to another does not seem to work. Dragging items from, say, a web browser to a document will crash the document. Copy and Paste works everywhere, but not dragging a picture/file. Not a major show-stopper, but something you will need to adjust to. Also, double-click to select a word works fine. But in most other office suites, you can double-click to select a word… hold down that second-click and drag to continue to select entire words… Yeah, that is not a thing in OnlyOffice. Again, not a deal breaker, but if your workflow consists of M$office muscle memory, you’re going to get caught every time. These are just minor polish points I noticed, and it could very well be the way this software is wrapped in Linux.
It remains excluded from being a M$office competitor as solely focuses on the Office basics of Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentations.
Pros: This is about as close to having a local replacement for M$office on your Linux desktop… or any desktop for that matter. It works well, is efficient, and has a great workflow. The fact that you can enable dark-mode is an added bonus that many will enjoy. Its a classic M$office workflow and contains the 60% of features you’ll actually use. It is cloud-ready and can incorporate many collaboration features. It has the added bonus of giving YOU the option of setting up your own cloud instance. The Application UI has nice classic M$office coloring that never really gets old.
Cons: Minor interface bugs (on linux, anyway). UI doesn’t blend natively with anything other than Kubuntu. (not a bad thing).
UPDATED 2020!
I’ve been working a bit more with methodical testing of some popular Office alternatives to Microsoft Office products. If you are interesting in my findings, I’ve published them in .pdf form below. I consider myself a huge fan of LibreOffice 6.3 (as you can probably tell) but putting it up against SoftMaker Office 18 and WPS Office 10 helped open my eyes a bit more. Needless to say, I was surprised at what I found.
LessonHUB 