# Microsoft PowerPoint 42 Hacker News commenters recommended Microsoft PowerPoint and 55 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended as a familiar, feature-rich slide tool with animations and Presenter View. Critics say it is buggy, and free rivals like Google Slides are enough. ## Why people recommend it - Solid and works fine (4 comments): "Word and PowerPoint are also very solid." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45977154)) "Excel, Powerpoint, Word .... all fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503531)) "I used it once for a fancy presentation and it worked fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46336357)) - Animations, transitions and Presenter View (2 comments): "PowerPoint itself has always supported a lot of powerful options like Presenter View" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50289969)) "Powerpoint allows you all kinds of benefits like animations or transitions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46215426)) - Flexible placement of anything (2 comments): "PowerPoint is probably the replacement because it doesn't restrict where things can be placed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197444)) "in PowerPoint they can put things all over the place" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203122)) - Good for lectures and research talks (2 comments): "I could make 4 lectures notes in PowerPoint, and they were better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45943913)) "PowerPoint is the best tool to prepare research presentations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716965)) ## What people warn about - Bugs, data loss and broken slides (3 comments): "Bluetooth audio stuttering when going in and out of full screen view in a given app such as PowerPoint." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46727758)) "I used PowerPoint via the browser and found this level of data loss is a regular occurrence." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49513446)) "I've had both Libreoffice and PowerPoint break large sets of slides in weird ways." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49406709)) - Free rivals and AI make it obsolete (3 comments): "I only create PowerPoint presentations a few times a year for work, which could be easily replaced with PowerPoint online or Google Slides" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49529592)) "PowerPoint is the poster child for the class of applications that AI totally obsoletes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47793162)) "we couldn't compete against a product that was basically being given away for free" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49406443)) - Poor interop with other formats (2 comments): "have been carefully and purposefully designed to be difficult to interop with other software." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49750816)) "the suggested replacement is PowerPoint, despite it being unable to natively open .pub files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192517)) - Confusing ribbon and template system (2 comments): "the template system is a horror show" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49405738)) "where all of the stupid fucking buttons are in the stupid fucking ribbon bullshit they made" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49852458)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Bento HTML presentation tool](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bento.md): 68 recommend - [Apple Keynote](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-keynote.md): 27 recommend - [reveal.js](https://hackerapproved.com/p/reveal-js.md): 11 recommend - [Immersa](https://hackerapproved.com/p/immersa.md): 8 recommend - [Marp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/marp.md): 7 recommend ## Where to get it - [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Microsoft+PowerPoint+Microsoft+365&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link) - [Official site](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/powerpoint) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Microsoft PowerPoint", https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-powerpoint/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).