Help / Making content

PDFs and Google Slides

Turn a PDF or a Google Slides deck into slides, and keep them up to date.

How documents become slides

A PDF or a Google Slides deck goes into your media library as a document. Pixigns turns each of its pages into a picture the size of your TVs. Add the document to a playlist and every page becomes a slide of its own, 12 seconds each, in order. The PDF itself stays in your library to download.

It's a quick way to put up a menu, a price list or a presentation you already have, and keep the design you made it with. Up to 50 pages of a document are used.

Upload a PDF

1. Open Media and press Upload Files, or drag the PDF onto the page.
2. Keep the tab open while its pages are made. The Uploads panel shows Making pages and Uploading pages as it goes, then Ready · 2 pages (with your number of pages).
3. Add it to a playlist: open the document and press Add to Playlist, or in a playlist press From the Library and add it.

Added from a playlist, you'll see Added Price List: 2 slides, one per page. (with your document's name). From then on, each page is an ordinary slide: change its time, transition or schedule, hide it, or move it. Publish to show it on the TVs.

Uploading PDFs works on every plan.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint files can't be uploaded directly. In PowerPoint, save or export the presentation as a PDF and upload that: each of its slides becomes a slide here. Or put it in Google Slides and add it from there, below, to keep it up to date.

Add a Google Slides deck

A Google Slides deck can stay linked to Pixigns, so when you change the deck, your TVs can follow.

1. In Google Slides, share the deck so anyone with the link can see it: choose Share → General access → Anyone with the link → Viewer. Then choose Share → Copy link.
2. In Pixigns, open Media and choose Create → Google Slides.
3. Paste the link. Give it a name if you like; left empty, it takes the deck's own title.
4. Press Add to Library and keep the tab open while its pages are made. It shows Downloading from Google Slides, then Ready with its number of pages.
5. Add it to a playlist, as for a PDF, and publish.

Update a document

When you change a Google Slides deck, open its document in Media and press Update from Google Slides. Pixigns downloads the deck again and makes its pages, then every playlist using it is updated in place:

• Each slide showing a page now shows the new version of that page, keeping its timing, schedule and place.
• New pages get slides after the deck's last slide, set up like it.
• Slides of pages that are gone from the deck are removed.

You'll see, for example, Updated: 3 pages. Publish to show them on the TVs. The TVs keep showing the old pages until you publish. Press Open in Google Slides to go to the deck itself.

Documents from Canva update the same way, with Update from Canva. See Canva.

Update every day

Google Slides and Canva documents check for changes once a day by themselves. In the document's details, Update from Google Slides every day is ticked to begin with. Once a day Pixigns checks the deck; if nothing has changed, nothing happens. If it has, the new pages are made and the playlists are updated as above.

Daily updates don't publish anything. The document says New pages are ready. Publish Breakfast to show it on the TVs. (with your playlists' names), so you can check the pages first. Untick the box and the document changes only when you press Update.

If a daily check can't reach the deck, for example because it's no longer shared, the document keeps its pages and says why under Couldn't update from Google Slides.

A document's pages

Open a document in Media to see its Pages. Each is drawn at the size of your first TV. If you change your TVs, for example from landscape to portrait, press Make Pages Again on an uploaded PDF so its pages fit the new shape.

If you closed the tab before the pages were made, the document says Its pages haven't been made yet. Open it and press Make Pages. Until then, adding it to a playlist says to make them first.

Deleting a document deletes its pages too, unless a playlist uses them. See Delete files.

If something goes wrong

• This deck isn't shared publicly. In Google Slides, choose Share → General access → Anyone with the link → Viewer, then try again.
• That isn't a Google Slides link. In Google Slides, choose Share → Copy link, and paste that. A link must start with https://.
• Its pages couldn't be read. Is the PDF damaged or password-protected? Open the PDF on your computer. If it asks for a password, save a copy without one and upload that.
• The first 50 of 64 pages. Only the first 50 pages are used. Split a longer document into two.
• Google Slides comes with the Basic plan. An owner can choose a plan in Settings, under Billing. Uploading a PDF works on every plan.
• The TVs still show the old pages. Publish the playlists that use the document.