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I create complex infographics in Illustrator that include both shape and text elements. From time to time my clients need a fully editable version that they can manipulate using only Microsoft office programs. I'd like to find a tool that will convert Illustrator files into fully editable PowerPoint text and shapes with formatting preserved.

I've tried the editable PDF to powerpoint and exporting as .wmf and ungrouping in powerpoint. In both cases the text is often broken apart into random chunks (sometimes the conversion places each letter of a word in its own text box) requiring me to manually replace and reformat most of the text.

Does anyone know of a technique or a program that could help?

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    I don't believe this is possible. .wmf is as close as you'll ever get.
    – Scott
    Jun 8, 2017 at 16:18
  • have you tried copypasting to powerpoint?
    – joojaa
    Jun 8, 2017 at 17:05
  • I've had the same issue before - I haven't found a way around it other than building everything but the text in illustrator then exporting and building the text elements in Powerpoint. I've found that dragging elements directly from Illustrator into PPT and ungrouping has worked the best for me in the past.
    – Joshjurg
    Jun 8, 2017 at 18:46
  • Try disabling kerning options since to do fancier kerning you have to break appart text.
    – joojaa
    Jun 8, 2017 at 18:49
  • #meToo i wish text fields would go from illustrator to powerpoint
    – Webster
    Apr 17, 2018 at 16:47

4 Answers 4

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Once your art is finished in Illustrator, select File | Export | Export As... and choose Enhanced Metafile (.emf).
Then, in PowerPoint: Insert tab, Pictures button, choose the .emf file. This brings in your artwork as native PowerPoint vectors. If you're on Windows, you can ungroup the emf art. It has to be ungrouped twice because a mysterious no fill rectangle has been incldued in the emf and it has everything grouped within it (presumably, it represents the Illustrator artboard), within an outer group. From there, all of your shapes originally drawn in Illustrator are now native, editable PowerPoint shapes.
CAVEAT: In Illustrator, only export your art with solid colors, and no effects. Gradients and effects like drop shadows will be rasterized, and you probably want your Illustrator art to be resolution independent.

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  • I use EMF to export from CorelDRAW to PowerPoint, with similar experience ("mysterious no-fill rectangle") and caveats. I export without gradients, and (re-)apply gradients in PowerPoint. If I want to resize in PowerPoint a Corel-drawn graphic that includes text, then I typically convert the text to curves before exporting from Corel to EMF. For an example of Corel-drawn graphics used in PowerPoint, see my video "The Lifecycle of an IMS Connect Transaction" (in particular, the transaction flow diagram from 9 minutes 15 seconds onwards).
    – Graham Hannington
    Sep 4, 2018 at 6:51
  • I don't see this effect from Corel, though: "the text is often broken apart into random chunks (sometimes the conversion places each letter of a word in its own text box..." Yes, text boxes in EMF exported from Corel do not preserve original alignment properties, and are broken apart line-by-line, but I've not seen letter-by-letter.
    – Graham Hannington
    Sep 4, 2018 at 6:56
  • Sometimes with a string of text, I convert to curves in Illustrator, and then make all the letters a compound shape, so it's one shape when brought in to PowerPoint. That will help preserve kerning.
    – itsmikem
    Sep 4, 2018 at 12:06
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You can try to create the image-part of your infographic in Illustrator and then add the text-component in PowerPoint. You can embed fonts in the PowerPoint-File if you require this (tutorial). This will work for simple Infographics but will become tedious and brittle for more complex ones.

Keep in mind that while this allows customizing the displayed text by your client but not overall composition. It also does not guarantee that it will look the same way on any machine. Image/Text alignment may vary between different instances of PowerPoint. Also PowerPoint is much less powerful when dealing with Text that Illustrator.

Other than that, no. It's not possible to give someone full ability to edit your graphics if this Person is using just PowerPoint.

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I can suggest two options, neither of which will give you a clean and tidy solution.

  1. You export the illustrator artwork to svg or emf (you can use the svg in LibreOffice as and odp file) things like dropshadows and and other path effects should be expanded. Once you have the svg or emf/at a reasonable facsimile to the illustrator file you should be able to change the color and and text in libre office impress as you would in Illustrator, I will be very blunt and tell you the quality of the vector objects will change both emf and svg have different ways they interpret the vector information from a postscript based file like .ai

  2. You export the sections of the illustration as raster files and place them accurately in PowerPoint, using the text box took you apply the text over each image.

In both scenarios you will absolutely end up with a massive large PowerPoint file after converting from odp in libreoffice after you've converted it to an svg from illustrator

Instead of relying on PowerPoint to save your client wouldn't it make more sense to to create a minisite they can use through the browser. I'm refering specifically to Prezi.com.

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I'd like to find a tool that will convert Illustrator files into fully editable PowerPoint text and shapes with formatting preserved.

The tool is... PowerPoint.

I think that you need to define your requirements. If the client asks simply for an infographic, for example for a web page you could deliver a PNG made in Paint (! I know)... but if they need it to be printed your requirement will probably change to PDF. In this case, your requirement changes again to an editable file in a specific program... your requirements need a different tool.

Your requirement, in this case, has probably never been doing it in Illustrator, it has been your tool of choice. Now you have to adapt yourself.

You can not event maintain fully editability across adobe programs. The same logic is applied when you make some assets in Illustrator, and some other made in Photoshop and then imported to be completed in Indesign. It is a similar case.

Prepare some assets that are needed to be done in Illustrator, and leave the ones that can not be controlled like textboxes to be edited in your final program, in this case, PowerPoint.

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