I’ve been running the conference circuit one time in my life, and many times, people use PowerPoint to present slideshows on-screen. Of course, we know that Keynote is a whole lot better and cooler for presentations, but let’s face it–a big chunk of the world’s computing population uses Windows.

So then slideshows are very useful in conferences. But some people might have missed your presentation. Or perhaps you want to share your presentation with the rest of the world–those who weren’t able to attend in person.

One solution would be to share your presentation via email. Another would be to upload the raw .PPT file somewhere. However, a better solution would be to publish your presentation such that it’s directly accessible from a Web browser. And Google Docs lets you do that in a snap.

Importing

Importing presentations into Google Docs will take just a few seconds. Easiest would be to load a .PPT file directly from email–that is, assuming you use Gmail. So when someone sends you a presentation, you don’t have to waste your time downloading it, opening MS PowerPoint and loading up the file. Just click the View as slideshow link, and you will be brought to a new window or tab with the presentation viewable online. As opposed to viewing it as HTML, viewing it as a slideshow will include images and other media.

Next would be uploading from a local file. So here, we go to Google Docs and click the “upload” button.

And then we upload our .PPT file.

Publishing

Now click on the Publish tab and then on the Publish document button, to confirm that you want this presentation available to the public.

Once your document is published, Google Docs will give you a link that you can share, which then opens this presentation as a Google Doc accessible by anyone.

Should you wish to unpublish the document, then just click the Publish tab while editing the document, and then the Stop publishing button.

Users who access this presentation will then be able to open the document as a Google presentation. Slideshow starts when the “start presentation” button is clicked.

Now I think this would also be useful in the academic setting. Teachers or professors can share their presentations with students easily without having to send large attachments by email.

Also, a virtual presentation can be held–a Google docs user can invite other users to view a slideshow and discuss (via chat) real-time. But that’s for another Google Tutor article.