Converting a presentation to PDF produces one page per slide, rendered exactly as designed, in a format that opens anywhere without PowerPoint. It is what you send when handouts are wanted, when the deck is going into a document bundle, or when you simply need the recipient to see what you built rather than a version reflowed by whatever software they happen to have. The conversion runs on our server, because rendering a deck's layout needs a document engine that has no browser equivalent: the file streams through the converter and the PDF streams back, with nothing stored, though the file does leave your device. Fonts are embedded, so the typography holds on machines that do not have them. Everything that moves — animations, transitions, embedded video — flattens to its static appearance, which is the trade a fixed format makes.
What flattens
Animations and transitions have no representation in a PDF, so a slide built as a sequence of reveals converts to its final state with everything visible at once. Where the build order carried meaning, the slide can read as cluttered.
The fix is to design for it: split a heavily animated slide into several slides before converting, so each stage becomes its own page. Embedded video and audio become the poster frame and nothing respectively, so a deck depending on them needs the original file alongside.
Speaker notes and handouts
Notes are not included by default — the conversion produces slides. If the audience needs the notes, either export a notes-pages version from PowerPoint first, or accept that the PDF carries only what is on the slides.
That is often the right call anyway. Speaker notes tend to contain the things you would say rather than the things you would publish, and sending a deck with the notes attached has embarrassed more than one presenter.
Check the aspect ratio
Slides convert at their own proportions, so a 16:9 deck produces wide pages and a legacy 4:3 deck produces squarer ones. Neither matches A4, which means printing will letterbox unless the deck was designed for paper.
For handouts that must sit alongside other documents, setting the slide size to A4 in PowerPoint before converting gives a much tidier result than fighting the print dialogue afterwards.