Microsoft has announced that PowerPoint for Windows is dropping support for the Office Presentation Service in favor of new web-based Live Presentations. The company has posted a message on the Microsoft 365 message center notifying that Windows users will no longer be able to broadcast their presentations from the PowerPoint desktop app starting this month.
“We will be retiring the feature ‘Office Presentation Service’ from the Windows version of PowerPoint (starting with build 16.0.14122.100000). We will be removing the ‘Office Presentation Service’ option/button from the “Present Online” menu under SlideShow ribbon in PowerPoint for Windows. Instead we recommend the utilization of “Present Live” in PowerPoint for the Web which is where we will continue to invest,” the company explained.
The soon to be unsupported Office Presentation Service was released around nine years ago. The service is freely available and requires a free Microsoft account. It allows users to present their PowerPoint presentations online to a remote audience by creating a temporary web address.
People who use the Office Presentation Service will now be able to use the new Live Presentations feature in PowerPoint for the web when presenting their content to others. The tool was announced back in June last year, and it makes it easier for the participants to engage with a presentation at their own pace. The audience can use a smartphone, laptop, or tablet to connect to the presentation and send live reactions, give feedback, or navigate back to review previous slides. They can also enable live captions and subtitles in their preferred language.
Microsoft has stated that this change is gradually rolling out to customers in the Current Channel as part of the monthly updates for PowerPoint (build 16.0.14122.100000). PowerPoint Live Presentations are supported on Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox on both Mac and Windows, and you can find more information on our detailed hands-on guide.
