One of the best and newest designs of Canva is Canva presentations. You can create stunning presentations with premade templates.

But what if you already have a PowerPoint presentation?

Can you upload a PowerPoint to Canva to take it up a notch?

You can do that in some instances, which I will explain in the post below.

I will also discuss why you could upload a PPT to Canva, and what to keep in mind when importing your file.

Can you upload a PowerPoint to Canva?

Absolutely! You can upload your PowerPoint presentations to Canva, whichever size dimension your slides may have.

However, you can upload your PPT file only through canva.com on your desktop browser or the Canva desktop app.

Canva Presentations and the feature of importing PowerPoint files to Canva is very new and unfortunately is not yet available with the Canva mobile app.

How to upload a PowerPoint to Canva

There are three quick and easy ways to upload a PowerPoint to Canva.

The first step, of course, is to log in to Canva. You can get a free account, or get a 30-day free trial for Canva Pro.

Now, there are three ways to upload a PowerPoint to your Canva account.

1. Drag and drop to the homepage

Stay on your Canva dashboard and homepage.

Locate the file on your desktop and simply drag and drop it to your Canva homepage.

And it’s done!

2. Upload a file

Just go to the top-right corner of your homepage and click on ‘Upload’.

You will be prompted to browse for files on your computer.

Select your PPT file and upload it.

3. Create a Design

In the top-right corner of your Canva homepage, you will also see the option to ‘Create a Design’.

Click on that, and then click on ‘Import file’.

Choose your PPT file from your desktop and upload it to Canva.

Where to find your PPT files in Canva

You can find your PPT files in Canva in three places.

I uploaded a presentation file I worked on recently, called Adobe Express vs Canva.

1. On your homepage

You can see the file in your ‘Recent Designs’ section on your dashboard.

2. In your Projects section in the homepage menu

Canva saves all your designed, edited, and imported files in your projects.

There are three places you can find your imported PowerPoint file within Projects.

1. ‘Recent’ on your Projects page

2. ‘Designs’ section on your Projects page

3. ‘Designs’ tab on your Projects page

3. In your Projects section in the design editing menu

You can also access your PowerPoint while you are editing a different design.

In the design menu on the left, you will see the Projects option.

Click on it, and you will find your uploaded PowerPoint under the ‘All’ or ‘Designs’ tab.

This could be very handy when you are working on one design and you want to access the PPT file for some elements you want to import.

For example, you could be creating a presentation, and simply need to take one slide from the presentation you uploaded.

See how in the example below I added one slide from my uploaded PPT in Canva to a different presentation.

What to keep in mind while uploading a PPT to Canva

There are a few things you should remember if you want to upload a PowerPoint to Canva.

1. Loss of features

There may be some differences in how your file looks in PowerPoint and in Canva.

First of all, Canva Presentations don’t support charts, SmartArt, 3D objects, and WordArt from Powerpoint.

If you use these features in your PowerPoint, they will not import smoothly into Canva.

2. Difference in look

Your PowerPoint slides might not look exactly the same in Canva as they do in PowerPoint.

Not all the styles and elements will import perfectly.

For example, when I imported my file with straight lines, boxes, and text, there were some minor problems.

The lines were not always straight, and the text wasn’t easy to edit.

These differences are usually easy to fix, but it’s good to know that it might happen.

3. Special fonts will have to be added to Canva

If you use regular fonts in your PowerPoint file that are also available in Canva, your font settings and styles may be imported smoothly.

However, if you use a special font in PowerPoint, it will not be carried forward to Canva.

There is a workaround, though. You can use Canva Pro to add fonts to Canva. 

This font can be applied in the PPT file that you upload as well.

4. Loss of animation

You can set animations and transition between slides both in Canva and PowerPoint.

But the animation features are slightly lesser in Canva Presentations compared to PowerPoint.

So all the animations may not be smooth when you import your PowerPoint file.

5. Limited size and slides

As of now, you can only import PPT files with a maximum of 300 slides and a maximum size of 70MB.

This limit may change in the future, but as of now, you can’t import mega and heavy PPT files.

Why should you upload PowerPoint files to Canva?

Given that the import of the files may not be perfect from PowerPoint to Canva, why should you upload them?

Why don’t you do everything on PowerPoint then?

Here are five reasons to upload PowerPoint to Canva.

1. Improve your presentation design

Canva offers 600K+ templates a giant stock library of 100+ million photos, videos, graphics, audio, and other design elements.

When you upload your PowerPoint files to Canva, you’ll have access to all these elements to take your presentation designs to the next level.

Canva may not support PowerPoint charts and SmartArt, but you can quickly make good-looking graphs in Canva from data in Excel and Google Sheets.

The graphics in Canva are much more modern and beautiful than PowerPoint, in my opinion.

2. Access your files from anywhere

Canva is an online graphic tool that offers up to 1Tb (1000GB) storage.

One of the best things about uploading your PowerPoint files to Canva is that because of the huge storage feature, you can save your presentations in Canva, and access them from anywhere.

You don’t have to carry around a flash drive everywhere and run the risk of losing it.

All you need is an internet connection and you can log in to your account and start working on your presentations.

This is great if you need to make last-minute changes or if you want to work on your presentations while you’re on the go.

3. Collaborate with others

If you’re working on a presentation with others, uploading your PowerPoint files to Canva is a great way to collaborate.

Canva for Teams lets you and your team can work on your presentation at the same time, from anywhere in the world.

Plus, all of your changes will be saved automatically so you don’t have to worry about losing any work.

4. Share your files easily

Another great thing about uploading your PowerPoint files to Canva is that you can share them with others easily.

You can download them, schedule them for social media,

5. Save time

Canva offers advanced tools that offer other great reasons to upload your PowerPoint files to Canva.

You can resize your presentation in one click so they look perfect on any screen size or aspect ratio.

You can remove backgrounds perfectly from any image, and also use the Canva brand kits to make your presentation quickly consistent with your brand look and feel.

Of course, you can do all these in PowerPoint, but firstly, the features are not as sophisticated as Canva’s tools. Secondly, it takes much more time on PowerPoint. In Canva, these edits can be done in a few simple clicks.

For all these reasons, it makes sense to upload your PowerPoint to Canva, if the files are not too big, complicated, or heavy.

Now that you know if you can upload a PowerPoint to Canva, there are a few more FAQs you can check out below.

How do I convert a PowerPoint presentation to a video in Canva?