What is the difference between .potx and PPTX?

Quite often, you might have received a PowerPoint presentation with a PPS or PPSX file extension rather than the normal PPT or PPTX extension. Here’s more info.

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First, let us tell you a little about these extensions:

• PPT is the default file extension for saving presentations in PowerPoint 2003 and earlier versions.
• PPTX is the default file extension for saving presentations in PowerPoint 2007 and later versions.
• PPS is the the show mode extension in PowerPoint 2003 and earlier. These files run in “play-presentation” mode when double-clicked.
• PPSX does the same thing in PowerPoint 2007 and later, and it runs in “play-presentation” mode when double-clicked.

Here are some more details that might help you clear the gobbledygook further:

• Technically there is no difference between PPT (or PPTX) and PPS (or PPSX) files.
• With PPT and PPS files, you can actually rename the extensions whenever you want and the presentation file will remain the same.
• With PPTX and PPSX files, you cannot rename at will, but trust us, they include the same slide content!

The difference lies in how PowerPoint treats them:

• By default, PPT and PPTX files open in edit mode within PowerPoint allowing you to use all the menus and commands.
• By default, PPS and PPSX files open in slideshow (play-presentation) mode, and you see no PowerPoint interface. When the presentation finishes or you manually exit using tthe ESC key, PowerPoint also quits.

Having said that, you can play all PowerPoint file formats (PPT, PPS, PPTX, PPSX) directly from within Windows Explorer. Right-click the file and the choose the Play option in the context menu.

You can also edit a PPS or PPSX file without changing the extension using either of these options:

• Just drag and drop the PPS or PPSX file from Windows Explorer into an empty PowerPoint window.
• Launch PowerPoint and open a PPS or PPSX using the File/Office Button | Open option to edit a presentation.

How Do I Convert a PPSX File to PPTX?

Follow these easy steps:

1. Save your PPSX file in a convenient location such as your Desktop.
2. Choose the File | Open option in PowerPoint to open the PPSX file. Make sure you choose this File | Open option rather than double-clicking the file, or double-clicking an email attachment.
3. With your PPSX file open in Normal view in PowerPoint, press the F12 keyboard shortcut to bring up the Save As dialog box.
4. Make sure you save now as a PPTX file. You can choose PPTX in the Save as type drop-down list.

See Also: PowerPoint Tutorials | PowerPoint Tutorials: Interface and Basics

Files with .POTX extension represent Microsoft PowerPoint template presentations that are created with Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 and above. This format was created to replace the POT file format that is based on the binary file format and is supported with PowerPoint 97-2003. The files generated can be used to create presentations that have same layout and other settings required to be applied to new files. These settings can include styles, backgrounds, colour palette, fonts and defaults. Such files are generated in order to create ready-to-use template files for official use.

Brief History

It was in the early 2000 when Microsoft decided to go for the change to accommodate the standard for Office Open XML. Documents, of different types, under this new Standard were identified by appending “X” in their extensions, where “X” being for XML. By 2007, this new file format became part of Office 2007 and is carried on in the new versions of Microsoft Office as well. The new file type has added advantages of small file sizes, less changes of corruption and well formatted images representation.

File Format Specifications

Files generated with office Open XML file format is a collection of XML files along with other files that provide links between all the constituent files. This collection is actually a compressed archive that can be extracted to view its contents. To do so, just rename the POTX file extension with zip and extract it for observing its contents.

Following sections shed some light on each one of these.

[Content_Types].xml

This is the only file that is found at the base level when the zip is extracted. It lists the content types for parts within the package. All references to the XML files included in the package are referenced in this XML file. Following is a content type for a slide part:

If new parts need to be added to the package, it can be done by adding the new part and update any relationships within the .rels files. It has to be kept in mind that for such a change, the Content_Types.xml must also be updated.

_rels (Folder)

Relationships between the other parts and resources outside of the package are maintained by the relationships part. The Relationships folder contains a single XML file that stores the package-level relationships. Links to the key parts of the PPTX files are contained in this file as URIs. These URIs identify the type of relationship of each key part to the package. This includes the relationship to primary office document located as ppt/presentation.xml and other parts within docProps as core and extended properties.

Each part of document that is the source of one or more relationships will have its own relationships part where each such relationship part is found within a _rels sub-folder of the part and is named by appending ‘.rels’ to the name of the part. The main content part (presentation.xml) has its own relationships part (presentation.xml.rels). It contains relationships to other other parts of the content such as slideMaster1.xml, notesMaster1.xml, handoutMaster1.xml, slide1.xml, presProps.xml, tableStyles.xml, theme1.xml, as well as the URIs for external links.

Explicit Relationship

For an explicit relationship, a resource is referenced using the Id attribute of a  element. That is, the Id in the source maps directly to an Id of a relationship item, with an explicit reference to the target.

For example, a slide might contain a hyperlink such as this:

The r:id#“rId2” references the following relationship within the relationships part for the slide (slide1.xml.rels).

Implicit Relationship

For an implicit relationship, there is no such direct reference to a <Relationship> Id. Instead, the reference is understood.

ppt Folder

This is the main folder that contains all the details about the contents of the Presentation. By default, it has following folders:

• _rels
• theme
• slides
• slideLayouts
• slideMasters

and following xml files:

• presentation.xml
• presProps.xml
• tableStyles.xml
• viewProps.xml

References

• [MS-PPTX] - PPTX File Format
• Open Office XML

• A POTX file is a Microsoft PowerPoint Open XML Template file.
• Open one with PowerPoint or Impress.
• Convert to PDF, PPT, and other formats with FileZigZag.

This article describes what a POTX file is, including how to open or convert one on your computer.

A file with the POTX file extension is a Microsoft PowerPoint Open XML Template file used to maintain the same layout, text, styles, and formatting across multiple PPTX files.

Like Microsoft's other Open XML files (e.g., PPTM, DOCX, XLSX), the POTX format uses a combination of XML and ZIP to structure and compress its data.

Prior to Microsoft Office 2007, PowerPoint used the POT file format to create similar PPT files.

POTX files can be opened and edited with Microsoft PowerPoint, Planamesa NeoOffice for macOS, and with the free OpenOffice Impress and SoftMaker FreeOffice.

If you're using a version of PowerPoint older than 2007, you can still open this file format but you need to have Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack installed.

Another way to use the file without PowerPoint is with Microsoft's free online version of PowerPoint. If you're interested in just viewing a POTX file, you can do so with Microsoft's free PowerPoint Viewer.

There are two main ways to convert a POTX file to a different file format like PPTX, PPT, OPT, PDF, ODP, SXI, or SDA.

Assuming one of the above programs that support the format is already installed, or you're using the online version of PowerPoint, the easiest solution is to open it there and then save it to a new format.

Another way is with a free file converter. Our favorite way to do this is with FileZigZag because you don't have to download anything; just upload the POTX file to the website and choose a format to convert it to. That website supports lots of export formats, including HTML, ODP, OTP, PDF, PPT, SDA, SXI, VOR, and others.

If your file doesn't open with the presentation software mentioned above, then there's a good chance you're misreading the file extension. This can happen rather easily since so many file extensions look similar.

For example, OTX looks almost identical to POTX and could even appear at first glance to be related to PowerPoint in some way. In reality, OTX files are used with a program called theWord. OXT is another one that isn't related to PowerPoint.

PTX files are similar. If you follow that link you can see that there are several formats that use that file extension, and none of them are even remotely related to PowerPoint.

If your file has an extension that isn't explained on this page, search for it on Google or at the top of this page (we might have a page on it) to learn more about the format and what program you need to have on your computer or other device to open/edit/convert it.

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