PPT file format
PPT is the binary PowerPoint format from before Office 2007. Decks in it still open, but they are bulky and increasingly awkward for anything modern.
or drag & drop them here · images, video, audio and documents · up to 2 GB
What is PPT?
PowerPoint began at a company called Forethought in 1987 and was bought by Microsoft the same year. The .ppt format that followed stored an entire deck — slides, layouts, embedded images and OLE objects — as binary streams inside a compound file, in the same family as .doc and .xls.
Its practical problem today is not that it fails to open but that everything about it is heavier. Images are stored without modern compression, the file cannot be inspected or repaired the way a ZIP-based PPTX can, and other applications render old decks less accurately, particularly where OLE objects such as embedded spreadsheets and charts are involved.
PPT files surface from training archives, conference collections and university course materials assembled in the 2000s. Converting them to PPTX shrinks them substantially and makes them behave predictably in Google Slides and Keynote; converting to PDF is the better move when nobody needs to edit the deck again.
| Extension | .ppt |
|---|---|
| Category | Document |
| MIME type | application/vnd.ms-powerpoint |
| Released | 1987 |
| Developed by | Microsoft |
| Compression | None (uncompressed) |
PPT: frequently asked questions
- Should I still use PPT?
- Only if a recipient or system explicitly requires it. PPTX is smaller, more compatible with non-Microsoft software and easier to repair when damaged. PPT persists as a legacy format from workflows that were never modernised.
- Why will my old PPT file not open properly?
- Old binary decks often rely on OLE objects — embedded Excel sheets, WordArt, legacy charts — that modern software renders imperfectly or not at all. Fonts from that era are frequently missing too, which shifts text on the slides.
- What is the difference between PPT and PPTX?
- PPT is the old binary format; PPTX is a ZIP archive of XML plus a media folder. PPTX is far smaller, inspectable, more robust and supported properly by Google Slides, Keynote and LibreOffice. Structurally they have almost nothing in common.
- Where do PPT files come from?
- Corporate training libraries, conference archives, university lecture collections and internal document stores built in the 2000s. They also come from applications that only ever learned to export the legacy PowerPoint format.
- Do embedded images and video survive PPT to PPTX conversion?
- Images almost always do. Embedded video from that era frequently does not, because it often relied on external media players or codecs that no longer exist. Check any slide that was supposed to play something after converting.
- Should I convert PPT to PPTX or to PDF?
- PPTX if the deck still needs editing or presenting; PDF if it only needs to be read and archived. PDF freezes the layout and fonts permanently, which is exactly what you want for material nobody will revise again.