Does SongShow Plus™ support Microsoft PowerPoint® (PPT) slide shows?

 Applicable SongShow Plus Versions:
This article applies to all versions of SongShow Plus.

Many people still use Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) for building slide show content. SongShow Plus can, in many cases, use the native PowerPoint files using the built in 3rd party support plug-in when a supported version of Microsoft PowerPoint is installed. There are, however, several limitations and restrictions to using this and it is not the most compatible with SongShow Plus.

Using native SongShow Plus file types is infinitely more versatile and reliable.

Fortunately, SongShow Plus has a couple of very useful tools that can solve most of the problems that people have with Microsoft PowerPoint files.

Review these articles for the best experience in SongShow Plus:

• PowerPoint slideshows - Import and conversion - Images slide show
  
• PowerPoint slideshows - Import and conversion - Video file
  

If you decide to use PPT anyway, Yes. By default, SongShow Plus will play PowerPoint presentations using the PowerPoint playback mechanism.  A full local version of PowerPoint needs to be installed on the system for the default configuration to work. 

NOTE: PowerPoint is implemented as an External Player and as such does have several limitations. SongShow Plus does include a PowerPoint conversion tools described above.

PowerPoint Version Support The following versions of Microsoft PowerPoint are supported in SongShow Plus.  Please keep in mind that while these versions have previously been tested with SongShow Plus and, in general, these versions should work in later builds/editions of SongShow Plus, the preferred version is used primarily in testing and any corrections will be made in subsequent releases of SongShow Plus with regard to the preferred version of PowerPoint.

Recommended settings for these versions of PowerPoint can be found in KB TS293.

• PowerPoint 2021 (Unknown Status)
• PowerPoint 2019 (Supported but known Stage Display issue)
• PowerPoint 2016 (Supported but known Stage Display issue)
• PowerPoint 2013 (Supported but does not support per step conversions)

INSTALLATION NOTE: Specific options that need to be included during installation from the Office Shared Features section are the Digital Certificate for VBA Projects and the Visual Basic for Applications options.  These are typically selected automatically during a clean default installation but SHOULD be verified by re-running the Office installer and checking through the Add or Remove Features install option if issues occur.

NOTE: ONLY the .ppt and .pptx file extensions are supported in SongShow Plus. 
The other available PowerPoint formats such as PowerPoint Show (.pps, .ppsx) and PowerPoint Template (.pot, .potx) and the macro-enabled versions (.pptm, .ppsm, .potm) have additional or different features than a “regular” PPT file and are not supported.  You should be able to convert any of these to a PPT/PPTX format in PowerPoint.

This list will be updated as new versions become available and are tested.

For historical reference, the following are previously supported versions of PowerPoint and the last version of SongShow Plus that they worked with. 

(faq22)