Editing Collaboration and revision history Google Slides serves as a
collaborative tool for cooperative editing of presentations in real time. Presentations can be shared, opened, and edited by multiple users simultaneously and users can see slide-by-slide and character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. Changes are automatically saved to Google's servers and a revision history is automatically kept with the option of reverting to previous versions. An editor's current position is represented with an editor-specific color/cursor, so if another editor happens to be viewing the same slide, they can see edits as they occur. A sidebar chat functionality allows collaborators to discuss edits. The revision history allows users to see the additions made to a document, with each author distinguished by color. Only adjacent revisions can be compared and users cannot control how frequently revisions are saved. Files can be exported to a user's local computer in a variety of formats, including
HTML,
.jpg, and
PDF.
Explore Launched in September 2016, "Explore" provides additional functionality to the
Google Drive suite through
machine learning. In Google Slides, Explore dynamically generates design suggestions based on the contents of each slide. The "Explore" features in the Drive suite follow the launch of a more basic research tool originally introduced in 2012.
Action items In October 2016, Google announced the addition of "action items" to Slides. If a user writes the name of a person the presentation is shared within a comment, the service will intelligently assign that action to the person. Google states this will make it easier for other collaborators to see who is responsible for individual tasks. When a user visits Google Sheets or any of the other Google Drive applications, any files with tasks assigned to them will be highlighted with a badge.
Offline editing To view and edit presentations offline, users need to be using the Google Chrome web browser. A
Chrome extension,
Google Docs Offline, allows users to enable offline support for Slides files on the Google Drive website. The Android and iOS apps natively support offline editing.
Files Supported file formats and limits Google Slides presentation files converted to the .gslides format cannot be larger than 100 MB. Images inserted cannot be larger than 50 MB and must be in either .jpg, .png, or .gif formats. Google Slides notably does not support .webp images, even though the file format works on most other Google services and it was developed by the company itself.
Google Workspace Google Slides is free to use for individuals, but it is also available as part of the business-centered
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) service by Google, which is a monthly subscription that enables additional business-focused functionality.
Other features A simple find and replace tool is available and like all Google Drive suite programs, Slides includes a web clipboard tool that allows users to copy and paste content between Slides and the other Drive apps. The web clipboard can also be used for copying and pasting content between different computers, although the
Google Docs Offline extension would need to be installed. Copied items are stored on Google's servers for up to 30 days. Google Slides also supports keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting in most circumstances. Google offers an extension for the Google Chrome web browser called
Office editing for Docs, Sheets and Slides that enables users to view and edit PowerPoint documents and other Microsoft Office documents on Google Chrome, via the Google Drive suite apps. The extension can be used for opening Office files stored on computers using Chrome, as well as for opening Office files encountered on the web (in the form of email attachments, web search results, etc.) without having to download them. The extension is installed on ChromeOS by default.
Discontinued features Google Cloud Connect was a plug-in for
Microsoft Office 2003, 2007, and 2010 that could automatically store and synchronize any PowerPoint presentation to Google Docs (before the introduction of Drive) in the Google Slides or PowerPoint formats. The online copy was automatically updated each time the PowerPoint document was saved. PowerPoint documents could be edited offline and synchronized later when online. Google Cloud Connect maintained previous document versions and allowed multiple users to collaborate by working on the same document at the same time. Google Cloud Connect has been discontinued as of April 30, 2013, as, according to Google, Google Drive achieves all of the above tasks, "with better results". == Notes ==