PowerPoint to flashcards: a deck from every lecture
Upload a PowerPoint deck and QuerySpark writes flashcards from what is actually in it, so you can drill the key terms on exactly what your course covers. .pptx files up to 20 MB.
- No credit card
- Free plan after the trial
- Cancel anytime
Drop a PDF, slides or notes
or paste a YouTube link
Quick answer
How do you turn a PowerPoint deck into flashcards?
Upload the lecture deck as .pptx and choose flashcards. QuerySpark reads the text on each slide and the speaker notes under it, and turns the key terms, definitions and explanations into cards, ready in about a minute. Study them in the app with spaced repetition, or export the deck as CSV and import it into Anki or Quizlet. You can start free with a 3-day Pro trial and no card; the free plan then includes 20 flashcards a month.
- Works with PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote and Canva decks saved as .pptx
- Cards come from slide text and speaker notes
- CSV export for Anki and Quizlet
- Free plan: 20 flashcards a month
How it works
How to turn a PowerPoint deck into flashcards
- 01
Download the lecture deck as .pptx
Use the file your lecturer posted rather than a printed handout. From Google Slides, choose File, Download, Microsoft PowerPoint; speaker notes come with it.
- 02
Upload one lecture at a time
One deck per lecture keeps each set small enough to finish in a sitting, and lets you see which lecture your weak cards come from.
- 03
Choose flashcards and a card style
Definition cards suit vocabulary-heavy courses; question cards and fill-in-the-blank cards suit processes and mechanisms. A mix is the default.
- 04
Review a little after every lecture
Rate each card as you go. Hard ones return sooner, easy ones fade back, so ten minutes a day keeps the whole semester's decks alive.
Example
Flashcards from MKT 201, Week 4
A sample of what you get from a PowerPoint deck on marketing. Yours is written from your own file.
Positioning statement
For [target], [brand] is the [frame of reference] that [point of difference] because [reason to believe]
Behavioral segmentation
Grouping customers by usage, loyalty, occasion or benefits sought
Perceptual map
A chart of how customers rank brands on two attributes, used to find gaps
What your flashcards include
- Term and definition cards for every key concept
- Concept cards that ask why and how, not only what
- Cards sized to your material: a short reading gets a short deck
- Spaced repetition built in: no deck settings to configure
How you study them
Flip, rate how well you knew it, and move on. Cards you find hard return sooner; cards you know well fade out until just before you would forget them.
Best for: vocabulary and definitions, formulas and dates, daily ten-minute review.
How we read PowerPoint slides
We open the .pptx and read every slide's text boxes and the speaker notes underneath them. Speaker notes are where lecturers hide the explanations, so questions get the reasoning, not just the bullet points.
Get the best results
- Use the lecturer's original deck, not a printout.
- Keep speaker notes in the file.
- Combine a lecture's slides with its reading for the strongest set.
PowerPoint to Quizlet
If your class studies in Quizlet, the cleanest route is to make the deck from the slides here and move the cards across. Export the deck as CSV, open it in Google Sheets or Excel, copy the two columns, and paste them into Quizlet's Import box with Tab as the separator between term and definition.
Pasting the CSV text directly often breaks, because any comma inside a definition gets read as the end of the term. Copying cells from a spreadsheet sidesteps that.
PowerPoint to Anki
Anki has no built-in way to turn slides into cards, so medical and nursing students usually make cards by hand from each lecture. To skip that, generate the deck here, export it as CSV, and in Anki choose File, Import, then map the first column to Front and the second to Back.
For anatomy or histology slides that are mostly labelled images, Anki's Image Occlusion is the better tool: it hides each label on the picture and asks you to recall it. QuerySpark cards are text, so they cover the explanations and the notes, not the pictures.
Can ChatGPT make flashcards from a PowerPoint?
Yes. Upload the .pptx to ChatGPT and ask for flashcards, and it will list question and answer pairs. Ask for a fixed "front; back" format if you plan to import them anywhere.
You still have to move them into a flashcard app and decide when to review each one. QuerySpark puts the cards straight into a spaced repetition deck tied to that lecture, so the next step is studying rather than formatting.
Making flashcards on PowerPoint versus from PowerPoint
Some people search for this meaning flashcard slides: a term on one slide, the definition on the next, clicked through like cards. That works for presenting vocabulary to a class, and PowerPoint is fine for it.
Turning a PowerPoint into flashcards is the opposite job: the lecture already exists and you want study cards out of it. That is what this tool does, and the cards come with a review schedule, which flashcard slides do not have.
How many flashcards should one lecture make?
A good rule is one card per idea you could be examined on, which is usually fewer than one per slide. Title slides, agenda slides and "questions?" slides carry nothing; a dense slide with a diagram and long notes can carry three or four ideas.
If a lecture gives you more cards than you can review in ten minutes, delete the ones on material your lecturer said is not examined. The free plan's 20 flashcards a month is about one lecture; the Pro trial is the time to do a full week of decks.
Things that trip people up with PowerPoint slides
Slides that are mostly images carry little text. Export those as PDF so OCR can read them.
Old .ppt files (pre-2007) are not supported. Re-save as .pptx in PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides.
Bullet fragments make vague questions. Decks with speaker notes produce much better ones.
Questions about powerpoint to flashcards
Save it as .pptx, upload it to QuerySpark and choose flashcards. The slide text and speaker notes become a deck in about a minute, studied with spaced repetition.
QuerySpark is free to start with a 3-day Pro trial and no card. After it, the free plan includes 20 flashcards a month, and you keep every deck you made.
Quizlet's import works from pasted text, so make the cards first. Export the deck from QuerySpark as CSV and paste the two columns into Quizlet's Import box.
Generate the deck here, export it as CSV and import it in Anki with File, Import, mapping the columns to Front and Back. Use Anki's Image Occlusion for slides that are mostly labelled diagrams.
Yes. Speaker notes are read along with the slide text, and they are often where the definitions and explanations are.
Export the deck as PDF and upload that, so OCR can read text inside the images. Pictures with no labels or notes give nothing to make cards from.
Yes, for most courses. One deck per lecture keeps daily reviews short and shows you which lecture your weak cards come from.
Yes. We read the slide text and the speaker notes, which is usually where the explanation lives.
Download them as .pptx (File, Download, PowerPoint) and upload that file.
Yes. Export any deck as CSV, which both Anki and Quizlet import.
Yes, to start. New accounts get a 3-day Pro trial with no credit card. After the trial the free plan includes 1 study session, 20 questions and 10 PDF pages a month, and you keep everything you made. You can also try the question generator on pasted text without an account, 3 times a day.
Still stuck? Email us.
Make flashcards from your PowerPoint slides
Start with a 3-day Pro trial. No credit card, and you keep everything you make.
