PowerPoint takes inspiration from TikTok and now allows for “portrait” presentations

PowerPoint, along with Word and Excel form the basis of Microsoft’s Office software suite, and these applications have never been fundamentally changed, as they are widely used in many professional fields, and maintaining compatibility as well as ease of use is important. But it looks like the mobile phone era is finally bringing changes to the way PowerPoint works, with the app now getting the ability to create presentations for viewing on mobile, rather than traditional screens.

PowerPoint adds portrait view on mobile

PowerPoint presentations have always been landscape, horizontal, a format suitable for viewing on a monitor, projector or TV in a conference room. Smartphones, however, have brought us “portrait” oriented screens, and in the last few years, with the evolution of social media towards the “Story” and, more recently, “TikTok” format, many types of content have adapted to vertical orientation.

Microsoft now offers the ability to create slides in portrait orientation on mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads that are more friendly to smartphone and tablet screens. The feature is currently only available to those who are part of the Insiders test program and who use the PowerPoint app on an Apple mobile platform.

Portrait orientation is easily enabled from the Design tab of the Presentation Editor, and existing presentations can easily be modified to display vertically. The feature is only available on mobile, however, where users would use the app to create presentations in this format. The PC version does not yet receive support for this usage mode.

To get access to this version you must have Office installed on your iPhone or iPad, be in the Insiders program, and be running version 2.68 (Build 22112003) of the app.

source: Office