23 PowerPoint Add-ins and Plug-ins – Free & Paid for 2023
If you go to the Microsoft Office website, you’ll see that there are hundreds of PowerPoint add-ins. But, in reality, the list of existing plugins is far longer. So, it can be pretty challenging to find the right apps for your presentation. Don’t worry, though, we have done a great job for you!
We’ve compiled 23 PowerPoint add-ins (both free and paid) 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.
Free PowerPoint Add-Ins
Here are 10 PowerPoint add-ins that will help you get your presentations done with the most satisfying results and without breaking the bank. These include apps for improving presentation design, a plugin for generating a QR Code, a tool for building online courses, and many more.
1. iSpring Free – 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 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
2. Power-User – Quickly Design Beautiful Presentations and Spreadsheets
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007 or higher
Power-User is a comprehensive add-in that brings an impressive number of powerful tools to boost 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
3. Pexels – Populate Presentations with Beautiful Photos
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2013 SP1/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, 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 presentation. You can highlight and save your favorite images for fast access.
Cost: Free
4. LiveWeb – Insert Live Webpages in 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 website as if you’re using a browser.
Cost: Free
5. PowerPoint Labs – Enhance Your Slides with Visuals
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016 for Windows
PowerPoint Labs is a time-saving tool that offers several features to make your presentations more eye-catching. For example, the add-in enables you to light up a certain piece of a slide, highlight bullet points and segments of text and background, zoom in on a particular section of a slide, crop a single object out of an image, etc.
Cost: Free
6. QR4Office – Generate a QR Code
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 you to create a QR code and insert it into your 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
7. Mentimeter – Get Your Audiences Involved with Interactive Polls and Quizzes
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint Online
Mentimeter allows 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 presentations.
Basic Mantimeter features are available for free. To get advanced options, you may opt for a premium plan.
Cost: Free
8. Icons by Noun Project – Illustrate Your Ideas on Slides
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2010/2013/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint Online
With Icons by Noun Project PowerPoint add-in, you can add some fun to your presentation and simplify the information 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
9. Pixton Comic Characters – Engage Your Audiences by Adding Cartoon Characters
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2013 SP1/2016 for Windows, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, PowerPoint Online
Pixton Comic Characters allows you to use more than 40,000 illustrated 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
10. ToDo List Pro – 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 add-in that integrates your task list within PowerPoint. It automatically saves the list with the document. So, the next time you open your presentation, you can see what’s left to be done.
Cost: Free
Paid PowerPoint Add-Ins
Here you’ll find 13 PowerPoint add-ins that have earned customers’ trust and are worth investing money in. They include both the entire suites that can make the process of creating complex presentations and e-courses more pleasant and small apps for enhancing your slides.
11. iSpring Suite – 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. The toolkit allows you to turn PowerPoint 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:
- Online mobile-ready courses. Convert your presentations into interactive custom courses in HTML5, SCORM, AICC, Tin Can API, and MP4 formats.
- Professional video training. Create video-based courses with graphics, transitions, annotations, and visual hints, and easily edit videos on the spot.
- Quizzes and surveys. Create interactive quizzes with 14 question templates, including drag-and-drop, hotspot, multiple response, and customize testing rules and design.
- Interactive role-plays. Train communication skills in real-life situations using dynamic branched role-plays with ready-made characters and locations.
- Interactions. Present content in a smart way with 14 interactive templates: Timeline, Pyramid, Media cards, Accordion, and more.
- Video lectures. Synchronize an expert video with presentation slides.
- Screencasts and video editing. Quickly make and fine-tune video tutorials and how-tos.
- eBooks. Turn your Word and PDF documents into interactive books with a page flipping effect in a couple of minutes.
- Content library. Build courses faster with tons of ready-made characters, templates, icons, buttons, objects, and locations.
- Custom characters. Choose a character from Content Library and customize everything from skin tone to clothing to make it perfect for your topic or audience.
Cost: Starts at $770/year
12. Pear Deck – 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 enhance your 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
13. SlideHub – Design Business Presentations Faster
Supported PowerPoint versions: Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 or later on Mac, PowerPoint on the web, PowerPoint 2013 or later on Windows
SlideHub is a PowerPoint add-in that includes thousands of designer slides for business, icons, creative illustrations from over 15 design categories, and more than 10 million license-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 PPT 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
14. Powerplugs Ultimate Combo – Enhance Presentations with Multimedia Content and Effects
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2003/2007/2010/2013/2016/ 2019 for Windows
PowerPlugs Ultimate Combo is a multimedia enhancement suite for PowerPoint. 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
15. ToolsToo – Simplify Creating Large Slide Shows
Supported PowerPoint versions: 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 the selected slides to a new presentation, removing unused slide masters and layouts, showing various slide statistics and estimated duration, and others.
Cost: $19.95
16. MLC PowerPoint Add-in – Get 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 slides, making all shapes the same color, and more. MLC PowerPoint Add-in also gives you an opportunity to set up your Branding Colors in PowerPoint and have the Corporate Assets at hand.
Cost: 77,97€ / year
17. HTML5Point – Convert Your Presentations to HTML5
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2016/2013/2010/2007/2003/ 2002 for Windows
HTML5Point converts PowerPoint presentations to HTML5 content that can be viewed on iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices. Fonts, rich media content, and most animations and transitions used in presentations are accurately preserved.
Cost: upon request
18. Speech-Over Professional – Voice-Over 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 microphone recording, 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 and type in your text.
Cost: $299
19. Quick Animator – Animate Your Presentation with a Single Click
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016/365 (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows
Quick Animator is a PowerPoint add-in that helps animate everything on your slides in no time. Choose an animation or transition and apply it to a single slide or all your slides at once with one click. You can also instantly remove all the animations and transitions in your entire presentation.
Cost: $24.95
20. Slide Show Duo – Display 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
21. pptXTREME ColorPicker – Easily Pick and Set Colors for Your Presentation
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007/2010/2013/2016/ (32- and 64-bit editions) for Windows
The ColorPicker PowerPoint add-in allows 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
22. PP Timer – Add 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
23. Office Timeline – Create Schedules, Timelines, and Gantt Charts
Supported PowerPoint versions: PowerPoint 2007 or higher
Office Timeline lets you create professional schedules, charts and timelines for project planning or tracking purposes. This tool is perfect for knowledge workers, marketers, IT professionals, and project managers.
The free offline version has 3 templates, and you have to upgrade to use the full library.
Cost: Starts at $4.95/month, billed annually
How to Install and Manage Microsoft PowerPoint Add-ins
There are two ways to download and install a PowerPoint add-in: one, from the Office store, and the other, from other sources. Below, you’ll find step-by-step guides for each of them.
Way 1: Add-In from the Office Store
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.
- Go to the Microsoft Office Store.
- 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.
- In the opened window, click on Refresh and then select the add-in you’ve installed. That’s it!
Way 2: Add-In outside of the Microsoft Office Store
Installing add-ins for PowerPoint from other sources is also quite simple but it requires a few extra steps. Learn about what you need to do below.
- 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!
How to Remove an Add-in from Microsoft PowerPoint
1. Click File > Options > Add-ins.
2. Toward the bottom of the window, where it says Manage, click Go.
3. In the opened window, select the 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 and install them to make your presentation even better and development easier.
If you know some other great apps for PowerPoint, please share them in the comments.
FAQ
How does a PowerPoint add-in work?
There are lots of PPT 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.
What is the best add-in for PowerPoint?
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.
Is it legal to use PowerPoint add-ins?
Yes, of course! Moreover, some add-in vendors are partners with Microsoft and get acknowledged by the company for their superior expanding capabilities.
