How to Generate a Link to Download a Google Slides Presentation as PowerPoint

Google Slides is a great (free) tool for using in classroom but also for business presentations. One of the main benefits of using Google Slides is that your team can collaborate online and work editing the same presentation in the cloud. Used in a good way, it helps to boost your productivity.

For teachers & educators, Google Slides also offers a way to keep connected with your students. Educators can create the presentations using Google Slides and then embed or link the slides from the learning platform (ie: Moodle, Blackboard, etc.).

Linking to Google Slides is a great idea if you want the visitors of any web page to open the Google Slides presentations, but if you need to provide a link to download the presentation in another format, then the default link won’t work.

Here is a great tip for users who need to provide links to directly export the Google Slides presentation to any supported format like PowerPoint or PDF.

Direct Link format

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1i4238yQwyAMsK-xMcuowTEczo-zNaPkBjH_dmjWokkU/export/pptx

When clicking this link, the Google Slides presentation is downloaded to your computer as a Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx) presentation file. You can see the original dark PowerPoint template here.

Example URL:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/<FileID>/export/<format>

where <format> can be pptx or pdf.

This way, you can bypass Google Drive viewer or Google Slides editor and create direct download links to include in any web page. The main benefit is that you only need to maintain and host one presentation and then a direct link can be provided for anyone who need to download it in a different format.