How to create a Canva presentation and edit in PowerPoint

So maybe you've heard about Canva and want to check out the templates, but feel overwhelmed at the prospect of learning how to use a new tool? Wondering can you convert Canva to PowerPoint? Great news - you can generate a template and start a presentation in Canva, then export it to PowerPoint to edit further.

Can you download Canva to PowerPoint? Yes - read on to learn more! This blog post provides a step by step guide for how to create presentations in Canva and export to PowerPoint for editing.

Step 1: How to create templates in Canva

Once you arrive on the Canva landing page,  you want  to select ‘Presentations’. This will take you to a view where you can select your presentation format.  For our example I’m selecting the Presentation 16:9 layout, because it is a size directly compatible with PowerPoint.

Canva has a lot of presentation templates and a feature to let you rapidly set up the templates even to customize the content structure.

Next I can select from available templates.  I could create a new presentation from scratch, but the point of this is to leverage a Canva template as a starting point that I can complete in PowerPoint.  I’ve selected a Real Estate template in this example.

Canva gives me the option to use all slides in the template, or to select specific slides.  I’m going to start by using all slides so that I have them when I export.

Using Canva’s Magic Design feature

Rather than selecting a template as per the steps above, Canva also now has a Magic Design option.  When you use Magic Design, you can enter the words to describe what your presentation is about.  Based on this, Canva can generate a specific template as a more customized starting point.   If you find an existing template that strongly aligns to your presentation intent then you may not need Magic Design.  But if you cannot see a template that matches your needs, this is a great option. 

For the Magic Design template I’m going to ask Canva for a ‘Consulting services proposal template’.

Canva generates several variant options based on what I have typed into the Magic Design prompt.

Admittedly most of them are not great, but we can do some further quick customizations.  However I can also revise my prompt to see if I can improve the relevance of the results.  For the following option I selected ‘start again’ and then I changed the prompt to ‘Strategy Consulting Services proposal for banking industry .  From this search I got new template options, as follows:

I’m getting curious now about the prompts, so I’ve revised it again in the following example, to Strategy Consulting Proposal for Fintech.

Refining the search terms slightly seems to have changed the main graphic used in the variant.  Ok, I’ll use this as my starting point for a template and do a few further customizations before I export it.

Once I select it, Canva loads the template into the editing view.  Note that because Magic Design is still in Beta, there is an annotation that the technology is still new and improving (this review was completed in April 2023).

Once I click on any of the slides in my chosen template, the screen will refresh with some editing options.  We can change the colors and images.

If you select to recolor a slide, a “Change all” button dynamically appears.

Note that if you primarily work with PowerPoint, the way that the Canva left hand panel of options dynamically changes can be confusing. 

Once you’re happy with colors, another option to explore is Layouts.  You can add more layouts to your presentation before you export it, to save time when you add / update the rest of your content.

Step 2: How to export Canva template to PowerPoint

Note that if you want to export your presentation to PowerPoint, there’s no point playing with the Canva Animations, as these will not come across when the file is converted.

Now that we’ve got a reasonable template, let’s export it to PowerPoint.  It’s a bit trickier than you would expect – looks like Canva is trying to hide the PowerPoint option.   To find it, click the Share button on the top right hand corner and you will see the following options.....

But you can Scroll down…

You would think that the Download menu would be the next step, but it’s not there!  Instead click on the … More menu

And scroll down (yes, very hidden!!)

Here it is! Canva has a save as Microsoft PowerPoint Presentation button in the More... section. Click this option and follow the prompts to save.

Step 3: Open your Canva Template in PowerPoint

Now that you have downloaded your Canva template to PowerPoint, you can open your presentation file in PowerPoint.

You should find that all text, images and colors can be updated or deleted.

It's important to note that when you import a Canva file into PowerPoint, it does not import the slides with a template into PowerPoint's template format. This means your slides are using a PowerPoint 'blank' template with images and color backgrounds over the top. If you want to insert a new slide into your presentation, the easiest way to do this is to use Ctrl + D to insert a duplicate of the slide with the relevant layout and then move and edit the slide.

But aside from the template constraint, you can edit the slides as you would a normal PowerPoint presentation.

Troubleshooting when converting Canva Presentation to PowerPoint

There are several limitations when you download Canva Presentations to PowerPoint:

• Templates and themes: If you are downloading a presentation from Canva to use as a presentation in PowerPoint,  it will not have a template or theme set up for it.  However if you are using Canva to create a template, this will not be as much of an issue.  Refer to the section below for how to convert Canva template to a PowerPoint template
• Animations: As noted above, animations do not come across when you download a Canva presentation to PowerPoint
• Colors: When you download a presentation from Canva to PowerPoint, because there is not a template set up in PowerPoint for your presentation, you will not have easy access to the color palette that you downloaded from Canva. However if you are using PPT Productivity PowerPoint add-in, you can use the eyedropper feature on the Color Toolbar to select and save the colors from your presentation, making it much easier to reuse them if you need to make further updates.