Accessibility and interactivity when exporting from … PowerPoint on macOS

[Mike Witherell]

Hi gang,

Pardon the seemingly off-topic posting, but you folks are the perfect audience to ask this question:

How do you create a PDF in MS Office (macOS) that also preserves interactivity and accessibility?
Currently, “Save as” gives the option for shipping your content out of your macOS and up to Microsoft Online Service in Word; but not PPT nor Excel. PowerPoint or Excel do not have the options to preserve any interactive elements, unlike PDFMaker in MS Office for Windows.
The recommended method on macOS now is to print to Adobe PDF Printer which preserves nothing. It appears it has been this way for over 4 years, and Apple help websites give bland non-answers.

I am a cross-platform guy, and seldom have to use Office PowerPoint on macOS, so I was wondering what you mac-only folks do about this limitation? Is there a work-around on macOS PowerPoint?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

To paraphrase James Thurber: "Kids, stay out of the PowerPoint game."

Not helpful, I know, but I find PP's mix of office-grade ubiquity, forays into "publishing" in amateur hands and abysmal mix of features and ability — effectively zero pro-level accommodation — to make it something to avoid, deprecate and find any possible alternative for.

Your frustration is just a reflection of that larger problem, I think. But I'll slink away now.

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

PowerPoint is an excellent program for presentations. PPT is not meant or marketed for publishing. Blaming PPT for bad presentations is like blaming InDesign for poorly designed materials. 😜

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I completely disagree — and I am no more judging things by 'bad presentations' (or the overwhelming number of presentations PP enables) than I am blaming Word for bad novels.

Unlike Word, which can be used effectively by any level, including as a near-peer of ID by an adequately skilled and motivated user (with fully defined styles and numeric definitions for almost everything), PP is an amateur's fingerpainting tool with no support for anything like rigor or precision or organization. Fifty-two slide transitions, drag-and-drop animations and the ability to embed multimedia until a flash drive explodes are not balancing assets.

But it's no more likely to be displaced, at this point, than Word. It's easy enough for me; I simply decline projects that must-must be done in PP. (And have moved more than one client to better platforms, to their great satisfaction.)

[Dave Creamer of IDEAS]

The only interactivity that I know of that is preserved is links, which should be retained by using a [Microsoft] Save As on either platform. 

[Mike Witherell]

Gentlemen, let's take the position that you have a project where you must hold your nose and use PPT. 

David, your screenshot shows a plate from PDFmaker, which is not present at all on the mac version.

How does the mac Office powerpoint user keep accessibility and interactivity alive with current versions (2023) of the software? 

Am I wrong to remember that past 4 years ago this all used to work better? Was not PDFmaker also on mac for a while? (My memory is not 100%)

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

My experience has been that interactivity in PP has been a cumulative feature, and somewhat oddly implemented (to be "easy to use" more than anything else), meaning exports and conversions are hit or miss. So I don't think it's just you or your versions/settings.

[Mike Witherell]

I have been reaquainting myself with PowerPoint on macOS and even though the PDFmaker module is long gone, there is something new with Adobe Create PDF cloud services. When you click on the Acrobat Preferences you see this:

Adobe Create PDF cloud services

And when you click on the Create PDF button, you get this:

You see this for a few moments:

In a few moments you see your PDF file show up and most of the interactivity and accessibility is in good (but maybe not perfect) condition.

My question: When did this service turn on and become available to the macOS user?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, that's... opaque. 🙂 "This Way to the Egress."

It would be nice if the whole tier of PDFmaker/writer and PDF Create and such was brought up to more rigorous standards, though. My suspicion is that the change is six more bits of tinsel and glitter, rather than solid improvements.

[Mike Witherell]

I would love to see a sameness on both platforms. Maybe this "whisk away and build it for you" is going to overtake the Windows version?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

See the other discussion about QR codes. While doing it within the Adobe/MS ecosystem is probably safe, there's way too much "give me all your precious data and we'll do something for you" out there. PDF creation is not such an involved process that it can't remain local, IMVHO.

I fear "services" bearing gifts, more and more these days.

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

My question: When did this service turn on and become available to the macOS user?

By @Mike Witherell

Hi @Mike Witherell,

Adobe started offering the Cloud service to Mac Office users a few years ago (4-5?). It doesn't make an adequately accessible PDF, so we advise our clients not to use it. Plus, being a cloud service, you run the risk of having your data mined, or become held hostage when your subscription runs out.

As to when Adobe will provide an Mac version of PDF Maker? My bet is "never," especially since their overall objective is to move everything one of their various cloud services.

Consequently, our shop refuses to produce any MS Office work on Macs.