We’ve compiled 23 PowerPoint add-ins (both paid and free) that will help you create engaging slides (and even full-fledged eLearning courses) and get them done easier and faster. Check the apps right now or just bookmark this article to read or reread in the future.
| Best Free PowerPoint Add-Ins | Best Paid PowerPoint Add-Ins |
| iSpring Free | iSpring Suite |
| Power-User | Pear Deck |
| Pexels | SlideHub |
| LiveWeb | Powerplugs Ultimate Combo |
| PowerPoint Labs | ToolsToo |
| QR4Office | MLC PowerPoint Add-in |
| Mentimeter | HTML5Point |
| Icons by Noun Project | Speech-Over Professional |
| Pixton Comic Characters | Quick Animator |
| ToDo List Pro | SlideShow Duo |
| pptXTREME ColorPicker | |
| PPTimer | |
| Office Timeline |
Here are 10 free PowerPoint add-ins that will help you get your presentations done with the most satisfying results and without breaking the bank. These include PowerPoint add-ins for improving presentation design, a plug-in for generating QR codes, a tool for creating interactive presentations and building online courses, and many more.
A PPT Add-in to Convert Your Presentations to HTML5 & SCORM
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016 (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows 10/8/7
iSpring Free helps you turn your PowerPoint project into a full-fledged eLearning course. You can convert it into a HTML5 format to post the output on the Internet or publish it to SCORM 1.2 or 2004 to upload it to your learning management system. After conversion, all the transitions, animations, and triggers are kept intact.
Enhance your instructional slides with quizzes and surveys and boost them with YouTube videos and web objects. Courses instantly adapt to any screen and play beautifully on smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in to Design Beautiful Presentations and Spreadsheets Quickly
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 and higher
Power-User is a comprehensive free add-in that brings an impressivenumber of powerful tools to boost PowerPoint presentations. Insert professionally designed templates, icons, flags, pictures, logos and maps directly in
PowerPoint. You can also create advanced charts such as Waterfall, Marimekko, Sankey, Tornado or Gantt, link your Excel charts and tables to
PowerPoint, and automate formatting to automatically create table of contents, clean the presentation or make titles, colors, fonts and bullets
consistent in the entire presentation.
Basic options are free, but you can get more with a premium plan.
Cost: Free
A PowerPoint Plug-in to Populate Presentations with Beautiful Photos
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 SP1/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, and PowerPoint Online
Pexels is a handy add-in to help you find free professional stock photos in one place. Use the Search by Color option and other image filters to find the perfect pictures for your PowerPoint presentation. You can highlight and save your favorite images to access them later in just a few clicks.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in to Insert Live Webpages Into Your Presentations
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 97 or later for Windows
LiveWeb adds live webpages right inside your PowerPoint presentation and refreshes these pages in real-time during a slide show. The app allows you to interact with any third-party websites as if you’re using a browser.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in to Add Spectacular Visuals to Your Slides
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016 for Windows
PowerPoint Labs is a time-saving tool that offers several features to make your PowerPoint presentations more eye-catching. For example, the add-in enables you to light up a certain area of a slide and highlight bullet points and segments of text and background. With PowerPoint Labs, you can also zoom in on a particular section of a slide, crop a single object out of an image, etc.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in for Generating QR codes
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2013/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint for iPad
QR4Office is a clean, quick, and easy-to-use QR generator. It allows PowerPoint users to create a QR code and insert it into a presentation. Add a QR Code in your eLearning course to let participants view additional information with rich media and download reference materials. You can also use a QR Code to take a quick poll or collect feedback.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in to Get Your Audiences Involved with Interactive Polls and Quizzes, GIFs, and Word Clouds
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, and PowerPoint Online
Mentimeter refers to Microsoft PowerPoint add-ins that allow you to turn training, meetings, workshops, and conferences into interactive experiences. Ask your audience a Multiple Choice question, let them vote with their smartphones, and visualize their opinions in real-time, or host a Quiz competition. Apart from polls and Q&As, you can also add slides, images, GIFs, and word clouds to your PowerPoint presentations.
Basic Mantimeter features are available for free. To get advanced options, you may opt for a premium plan.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in to Illustrate Your Ideas on Slides
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint Online
Icons by Noun Project is one of the best PowerPoint add-ins that allows you to add some fun to your presentation and simplify the information that’s presented. Select from a huge collection of high- quality symbols, characters, and diacritics special characters; choose a color, and edit icon size.
You can get started with free access to 100 of the most frequently used pictograms and, if necessary, unlock the entire collection of more than 1 million icons by choosing a paid pricing plan.
Cost: Free
A PowerPoint Plug-in to Engage Your Audiences by Adding Cartoon Characters
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2013 SP1/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, and PowerPoint Online
Pixton Comic Characters refers to the best PowerPoint add-ins providing access to illustrated characters. It allows you to use more than 40,000 characters as pedagogical aids in your presentation. They come in different ages, ethnic groups, and sexes. Once you choose a character, select a clothing style and an appropriate pose. You can also add a speech bubble to your character.
Cost: Free
A PPT Add-in to Keep Track of PowerPoint Tasks
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2013 SP1/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint Online
ToDo List Pro is an easy-to-use free add-in that integrates your task list within PowerPoint. It automatically saves the list with the document. So, the next time you open your slide deck, you can see what still has to be done.
Cost: Free
Here you’ll find 13 PowerPoint add-ins that have earned customers’ trust and are worth investing money in. They include both entiresuites that can make the process of creating complex presentations and e-courses more pleasant, as well as small PowerPoint add-ins for enhancing your slides.
A PPT Add-in to Turn Your Slides Into Engaging eLearning Courses
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows 10/8/7
If you use PowerPoint for creating eLearning courses, you can make them more compelling and interactive with iSpring Suite. This toolkit is definitely one of the best PowerPoint add-ins on the market. It allows you to turn PPT presentations into supercharged interactive courses that will play perfectly on any device and take your learning content to the next level.
Here’s what you can create with iSpring Suite:
Cost: Starts at $770/year
A PPT Add-in to Show Presentations and Check Knowledge at the Same Time
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint Online
Pear Deck is an add-in for PowerPoint Online and Google Slides, popular at schools. This tool lets you create engaging presentations with interactive questions that will pop up on learners’ devices as they advance the slides. Students’ answers will be displayed on the screen or a classroom projector, but they don’t need to worry about giving incorrect answers in front of the class, as all the answers are anonymous. At the same time, teachers can view all of the quiz results along with other data analytics on their private dashboard and collaborate with their colleagues to develop an individual approach for
each student.
Cost: Starts at $149.99/year
A PowerPoint Plug-in for Designing Business Presentations Faster
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2016 or later on Mac, PowerPoint on the web, PowerPoint 2013 or later on Windows
SlideHub is a PowerPoint plug-in that includes thousands of designerslides for business, icons, creative illustrations from over 15 design categories, and more than 10 million royalty free images and free stock photos. SlideHub provides you with ready-made assets that automatically adjust to your company’s colors, so you can save a lot of time creating a PowerPoint presentation with this tool – simply select the ready-made content you need, add texts and numbers, and you’re done.
Cost: Starts at $14 per active user per month with a minimum of three active users
A PPT Add-in for Enhancing Presentations With Multimedia Content and Effects
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2003/2007/2010/2013/2016/ 2019 for Windows
PowerPlugs Ultimate Combo can be considered one of the best PowerPoint add-ins for multimedia enhancement. It includes 21 full volumes of presentation-enhancing multimedia content and effects. It also offers over 4 million professionally designed PowerPoint templates, about 100 background videos, 1,900 visually-stunning charts and diagrams, and 75 animated 3D character slides.
Cost: $366
A PPT Add-in to Simplify the Creation of Large Slide Shows
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016/2019 (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows
Tools Too is a comprehensive suite of tools designed to make the process of creating presentations much easier. It adds more than 85 powerful yet easy-to-use productivity tools to the PowerPoint ribbon. These include making rounded corners in multiple shapes, extracting selected PowerPoint slides for use in a new presentation, removing unused slide masters and layouts, showing various slide statistics and estimated duration, and others.
Cost: $19.95
A PPT Add-in for Getting Slides Done Faster
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2003/2007/2010/2013/2016/ 2019 for Windows
MLC PowerPoint Add-in is a set of functionalities developed to speed up your tasks in PowerPoint. For example, it has tools for swapping shape positions, making all items the same size, rectifying lines, replicating selected objects to active presentation slides, making all shapes the same color, and more. MLC PowerPoint Add-in alsoallows you to set up your Branding Colors in PowerPoint and have the Corporate Assets at hand in just a few clicks.
Cost: 77,97€ / year
A PowerPoint Plug-in for Converting Your Presentations to HTML5
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2002/2003/2007/2010/2013/2016 for Windows
HTML5Point converts PowerPoint presentations to HTML5 content that can be viewed on iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices. All presentation materials, fonts, rich media content, and most animations and transitions used in presentations are accurately preserved.
Cost: upon request
A PPT Add-in to Produce Voice-Overs for Your Presentations
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016/2019 (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows
Speech-Over Professional allows you to add voice-over to PowerPoint-based eLearning courses and training videos. You can use audio narration recordings, ready-made audio files, and realistic text-to-speech voices. Text-to-speech voices are available in different languages and dialects. Simply select a voice, type in your text, and your audio narration is ready.
Cost: $299
A PPT Add-in for Animating Your Presentation with a Single Click
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016/365 (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows
Quick Animator interacts with PowerPoint add-ins to animate everything on your slides in no time. Choose an animation or transition and apply it to a single slide or all your slides with one click. You can also instantly remove all the animations and transitions from your entire slide show.
Cost: $24.95
A PPT Add-in for Displaying Two Slides at Once
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2000/2002/2003/2007/2010 (32-bit)/2013 (32-bit)
Slide Show Duo lets you show two consecutive PowerPoint slides on a single display. So, your viewers can retain more information from the previous slide and follow the flow of your presentation.
Cost: $49.95
A PPT Add-in for Choosing and Setting Colors for Your Presentation Easily
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016/ (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows
The ColorPicker is one of the best PowerPoint add-ins that enable you to pick colors from anywhere on your screen and automatically set the fill, text, outline, shadow, and background colors of selected slides and shapes. Web color string is copied to the clipboard, so you can paste in other tools, for example, Photoshop.
Cost: $19.95
A PPT Add-in for Adding a Timer to Your Slides
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2013 SP1 or later, PowerPoint 2016 or later for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint
Online
PP timer is designed for presenters to keep track of the time when speaking. This plugin enables you to insert a timer directly into your presentation. You can choose between an analog or digital timer. When presenting, you can start the timer with a single mouse click.
Cost: Starts at $5/year
A PPT Add-in for Creating Schedules, Professional Timelines, and Gantt Charts
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007 or higher
Office Timeline lets you create professional schedules, Gantt charts, and timelines for project planning or tracking purposes. This tool is perfect for knowledge workers, marketers, IT professionals, andproject managers. The free version has 3 templates, and you need to upgrade to use the full library.
Cost: Starts at $4.95/month, billed annually
There are two ways to download and install PowerPoint add-ins: from the Office store or from other sources. Below, you’ll find step-by-step guides for each of them.
If the add-in you’re interested in is in the Microsoft Office Store, the easiest way to download it would be from there. Here’s a quick guide to the entire process.
1. Go to the Microsoft Office Store.
2. Find the add-in.
3. Click on Get it now. Microsoft will automatically upload the add-in to your computer.
4. Go to PowerPoint and click on Insert. Then select My Add-Ins.
Installing PowerPoint add-ins from other sources is also quite simple but it requires a few extra steps. Learn what you need to do below.
1. Download an add-in.
2. Open PowerPoint and go to File > Options. Then select Add-ins.
3. Go to the bottom of the window where you see Manage. Select PowerPoint Add-Ins in the drop-down list and click Go.
4. In the opened window, click on Add New. Find the add-in on your computer and click OK.
And that’s it, you’re good to go!
1. If you’re not going to use some of your PowerPoint add-ins anymore, go to File > Options > Add-ins.
2. Toward the bottom of the window, where it says Manage, click Go.
3. In the opened window, select the PowerPoint add-ins you want to remove.
4. To disable the add-in, just uncheck the box in front of its name. To uninstall the add-in, select it and click Remove.
5. Click OK to save your changes.
If you’re not taking advantage of some of our favorite PowerPoint add-ins, you’re definitely missing out.
Find your favorites andinstall them to make your PowerPoint presentation even better and development easier.
If you know of some other great PowerPoint plug-ins, please share them in the comment section.
There are lots of PowerPoint add-ins, and many of them work in a particular fashion, so there’s no universal approach for all of them. Tools like iSpring Free and iSpring Suite work like this: you download them and they then appear as an extra tab on the PowerPoint ribbon.
PowerPoint add-ins differ in their aims and functionality, so choosing the best really depends on your particular case. However, if you need an add-in for online learning, consider iSpring Suite, the best PPT add-in for eLearning, or its free version, iSpring Free.
Yes, of course! Moreover, some add-in vendors are partners with Microsoft Office Software and get acknowledged by the company for their superior expanding capabilities.