getdeckBefore you send the deck to a client, check they can actually open it
When a deck leaves your team, pick file or link based on what the recipient can open. Here are three questions to ask before you send, and how far PPTX, HTML and the read-only link go in getdeck.
Ask three things before you send
When a deck goes outside your team, check three things about the person receiving it before you export anything.
- Can they open it without making an account?
- Do they need to edit it, or only read it?
- Will it open on their screen the way it looked on yours?
If this looks familiar
Skip those questions and the answers come back after you have already sent it. Picture the morning a proposal is due. This is a made-up scene. You email a client contact a cloud link, and the tool asks them to sign in. They do not want another account, so they ask whether you can send a file. You export one and resend it. This time they open it and spot a typo, but the slides are pictures, so they cannot fix it and send it back to you. Two more emails go back and forth before it is done. The time goes into finding out, after sending, whether the recipient could open it in the form you chose. The deck itself was already finished. Microsoft’s help covers both routes. Use Share and Copy link to make a link and set who can open it in the settings, or, if you do not want the file in the cloud, send it as an email attachment (checked 2026-11-11). Either route only helps if the recipient can use it.
Pick the form by who is receiving it
- Showing it to someone on your own team and collecting comments: a link. There is one original, so copies do not multiply.
- Someone who has no account or does not want one: a file. A file becomes a copy the moment you send it, so you have to merge whatever the recipient changes yourself.
- If the recipient has to edit it, the text must be real text in the file.
How a deck leaves getdeck
There are three ways to take a deck out of getdeck. Choose the one that fits the recipient before you send.
- A PPTX file. You get a .pptx in the theme you are looking at, with the text you put in the slots set as text boxes. The recipient can fix a typo in PowerPoint. Exported files have been opened in PowerPoint on Windows and in Keynote and worked; they have not been checked in PowerPoint for Mac or Google Slides. PPTX export starts at Pro.
- An .html file. It comes out as one file that opens in a browser. A logged-in free account is enough.
- A read-only link. Share My Templates by link and whoever opens it can only look at the deck. They cannot edit, export or present it, and only people logged in to getdeck can open it.
What changes when you work this way
- A deck you sent as PPTX gets its typos fixed on the spot by whoever received it. That can cut the round trips of "please fix this".
- If you know the recipient has no getdeck account, you send a file from the start instead of waiting for the reply that says it will not open.
- You can send a link to your team and a file to the client and both come from the same template, so you are not keeping two copies.
When it does not fit
The read-only link needs a getdeck login, so you cannot use it to let a client contact without an account just read the deck. For that you send a PPTX file, which needs Pro. And if the recipient opens it somewhere other than the two programs above, such as PowerPoint for Mac or Google Slides, nobody has checked it there yet.