Importing designs (PowerPoint, PDF, Canva, Slides)

If your team already designs in PowerPoint, Canva, Google Slides, or has PDFs from a print shop, you don't have to rebuild anything. Import the file, review what each page will become, and add the pages you want.

What you can import

• PDF — the universal path. Each page comes in as an image of the page as it was designed: photos, colours, fonts and layout intact. The words on the page are part of that image, so they can't be retyped — you add new text, QR codes and live widgets on top of it instead. Pages are rendered at screen resolution (1920 pixels on the longer side), which stays sharp on a TV but is not a print-quality copy.
• PowerPoint (.pptx) — comes in as editable text and pictures, rebuilt from each slide. A rebuild never matches a slide exactly, so check each one in the builder. If you want a slide to look exactly as it was designed, use File → Export → PDF and import that instead.
• Images — PNG, JPG or WEBP. One image, one template.
• A VenueOS template file (.json) — exported from another account. It's restored as-is, scenes and all, with no conversion step.

Older .ppt files aren't supported. Open one in PowerPoint and Save a Copy as .pptx, or export it to PDF.

How it works

1. Open Templates and click Import design.
2. Drop your file in. We get every page ready on our side first — nothing is added yet.
3. Review. Every page of your document is listed. For a PDF page, the picture you see is what will be added. Tick the pages you want.
4. Each page comes in one of two ways, and the panel says which:

- Keep the look — PDF pages and images. Your design stays intact, as an image; add new text, QR codes and live widgets on top in the builder. - Editable layers — PowerPoint slides. Text and pictures become elements you can retype, restyle and move. The panel tells you how many of each that slide will give you.

1. Click Add. The button says how many templates it will create, and that is how many you get.

If we're busy converting another file when you drop yours in, we say so — click Try again and the same file goes back in without choosing it again. If a PDF can't be used because it's damaged, password-protected, empty or too large, we tell you which, and what to do about it. We never swap in a different kind of import instead.

What you'll see flagged

The review step tells you anything that didn't come through cleanly, page by page, before you commit:

• If your document is longer than we convert in one go, we say so and how many pages were rendered. The pages past the limit are still listed, so you know they weren't missed — import them as a second file.
• On PowerPoint slides, fonts we don't have, shapes we can't rebuild and pictures that failed to load are each named against the slide they're on.
• On PowerPoint slides, text that would have landed unreadable on its own background — dark on a dark slide, or white where we could not bring the picture background across — is recoloured so you can see it, and the slide says so. Change it back in the builder if you'd rather.

Anything we could not convert at all is still listed, so you always know it wasn't missed.

Making an imported page live

This is the part worth knowing.

• A PDF page or an image comes in as one picture. Open it in the builder and add widgets on top — a clock, today's lunch menu, the bell schedule, a QR code — placed where they belong in your design.
• A PowerPoint slide comes in as editable layers. Select a text box and use Make it live: the line someone retypes every week becomes an element that keeps itself current.

That's the difference between a picture on a screen and a board that maintains itself.

Tips

• Match your screen's shape: 16:9 for landscape TVs, 9:16 for portrait displays.
• For images, export at high resolution — a 4K image stays crisp on big displays. PDF pages are rendered at screen resolution whatever size you export them.
• Animations, slide transitions and embedded video are not part of a conversion. If a deck depends on motion, export it to video and upload that as an asset instead.
• Importing doesn't put anything on a screen. Schedule the template when you're ready.