Have you ever run into a situation where you tried to upload and convert a PowerPoint file to Google Slides and it said “The file is too large to open. Please try with a smaller file.” Don’t worry as there is small trick to bypass this error and in this guide we will help you do that.
“The file is too large to open”
Don’t be surprised if you see this error.
Google Slides a limit of 100 MB file size for presentations converted to Google Slides.
You might also see the error “Couldn’t preview file – file is too large to preview” or in some cases even the error message might say “Couldn’t preview file. You may be offline or with limited connectivity. Try downloading instead”
This means that if you have a PowerPoint presentation that is below this limit it will be converted very easily however if you have a file bigger than this then you will see the very familiar error on your screen.
How to open large files on Google Slides
1. Reduce the PowerPoint file size
The first thing you need to do is reduce the size of the PowerPoint file to under 100 MB. To do this, you can:
- Use a service like Compress PPT/PDF which lets you compress your PPT files.
- If you have PowerPoint installed open the file in PowerPoint. Click on File menu, select Reduce File Size and select “Best for viewing on screen”
Split the PowerPoint into multiple files
This is another clever way.
You can split the the PowerPoint file into two or multiple files so the size of each file is <100 MB and upload and convert to Google Slides and stitch them. To split the files:
- Use a service like PPTX split to split the PPTX files into multiple files.
- Open the file in PowerPoint and manually split the slides and save it as multiple files.
Once you upload and convert files to Google Slides you can use the Slide copy/paste feature to have a full slide deck with all slides.
That was simple now wasn’t it. Our site has a lot of detailed guides on Google Sheets and Google Docs so enjoy browsing and if you have any questions please feel free to post in the comments below.
AwsmTips Team consists of some of many awesome experts who want to learn and share new things with people on the internet.
the site you mention coverts it to pdf whereas we need PPT
Ridiculous that these are the only ways to do it. If you want people to move to google you better fix this!
not happy…it wasn’t too large to trust to google in the up load, and now when I need it the file isn’t available. that’s not how this is supposed to work…is it?