How to Storyboard with Google Slides
Google Slides is an online tool for creating and formatting presentations. It's incredibly versatile, and is the perfect partner for planning your next film or video project.
Google Slides is a cloud-based service, which means that you can access it from any computer with an internet connection. It supports real-time editing and collaboration, so it's ideal for teams who want to work together to create presentations. Along with Google Docs, Google Forms and many other Google apps, it comes as part of Google Workspace, where you'll see it referred to simply as Slides. Also worthy of a mention is that Google Slides is a free service!
Storyboard software for video agencies & brand teams
One workspace for storyboards, animatics, comments, and approvals. Spend time on the creative, not the back-and-forth.
Like Google Slides, Boords is also a cloud-based, collaborative tool. While Google Slides focuses primarily on presentations, Boords allows users to create and share storyboards online. It helps transform an idea into a tangible storyboard in a matter of minutes. These storyboards can then be shared with others via an online sharing link, or exported as a printable PDF or an editable deck you can open in Google Slides. Luckily for you, Boords is also free to try. Hurray for freebies!
Boords vs Google Slides
Though Boords and Google Slides share some similarities, they're typically used at different stages of pre-production.
Benefits of Google Slides
In broad terms, Google Slides is a general presentation tool. Content is uploaded to Google Slides to create a presentation slideshow, similar to PowerPoint. Anyone needing to make a presentation can benefit from using Google Slides. This could include business owners, teachers, students, public speakers and many more.
Google Slides works particularly well for pitch decks where the main goal is to help investors or potential clients learn about a business and the value it can offer them. A good pitch deck should be both compelling and informative, and so it often includes a storyboard (or part of a storyboard), style frames, references, costs and project timelines.
Benefits of Boords
Boords, on the other hand, is a preproduction tool for creating, sharing and approving storyboards and animatics. You can upload your own images, generate frames with AI, or use a drawing tablet or iPad to sketch directly into the storyboard's frames. Characters, locations and props saved to your team's Asset Library can be reused in every board.
You can then add notes to each frame to create a fully-fledged, ready-to-share storyboard. Teams of creatives can collaborate with each other in real-time, create storyboard iterations with versions and gather feedback from comments.
For many creatives, the work they do in Google Slides is a follow-on step from what they've already created in Boords. A storyboard (or a section from a storyboard) is often taken from Boords and uploaded to Google Slides to form part of a pitch deck.
How to use Boords with Google Slides
Export an editable PowerPoint deck from Boords, then import it into Google Slides. Here's how.
Step 1: Open the Slides export
Open the storyboard you want to present. Click Export in the top bar, then choose Slides.
Step 2: Choose a layout and set your preferences
Under Appearance, pick a layout, then set the image size, background and text colours, and font. The layouts on offer depend on your frames' shape. Widescreen frames go from one frame per slide up to an eight-frame grid, while portrait frames use the three-up layout shown here. The preview on the left updates as you go.
Under Footer, add your logo or untick the version number, page number and document name. Turn them all off if you plan to add your own branding to the deck in Google Slides.
Step 3: Export PowerPoint
Keep PowerPoint selected and click Export PowerPoint. When the export is ready, click Download PowerPoint. You'll get a .pptx file where each frame's text is a real text box, so you can edit copy after you import it. If you'd rather have flat images, choose Images and click Export images to download a ZIP with one image per slide.
On the Free plan and during a trial, Slides exports images only. Choose Images, or click Upgrade for PowerPoint to export an editable deck. On Free, each slide image carries a Free Version watermark.
Step 4: Import into Google Slides
Open your Google Slides presentation and select File > Import slides. Choose the Upload tab, then browse to the .pptx file you downloaded.
Click Select all, or pick the slides you want, then click Import slides. To start a new presentation from the deck instead, upload the .pptx to Google Drive and open it with Google Slides.
Each frame's image, number, title and notes arrive as separate objects, so you can edit the text, move frames around or add your own slides around them.
If you exported images, select Insert > Image > Upload from computer and add each image to its own slide.
For what the deck includes, the layouts on offer and which plans export it, see Boords for Google Slides. Presenting from PowerPoint instead? The same deck downloads as an editable .pptx.
Sharper preproduction, less back-and-forth
Workflow tips and Boords product updates for video and brand teams, twice a week.
More from the blog
Get every video signed off before production starts
Create scripts, storyboards, and animatics with your team.
Collect client feedback, keep every version on record, and go into production knowing exactly what was approved.
