Creating presentations with Quarto

Quarto can also turn a .qmd file into a slide deck. Presentations use the same YAML header and Markdown body as the reports covered in the previous tutorial; they simply render slide-by-slide instead of page-by-page.

Do: Take the Quarto report that you started working on at the documents tutorial. Do you think you could turn it into a slideshow just by changing the format field in the YAML header, or would you need to rewrite the file from scratch?

See: Switching formats is again very simple at the YAML level. In practice you probably want to reorganize the content itself, since a slide holds much less text than a page, and each heading needs to mark where a new slide begins.

Presentation Formats

Format	Output Type	Strengths	Challenges
revealjs	HTML slides	Flexible; supports transitions, incremental reveals, embedded code.	Web-based only; needs attention to screen layout.
pptx	PowerPoint	Easy to share; editable after rendering.	Limited styling and dynamic features.
beamer	PDF slides (LaTeX)	High-quality, printable; ideal for academic talks.	Complex LaTeX configuration; limited interactivity.

Example: A Reveal.js Presentation

• Example .qmd file
• Resulting .html output

Each slide begins with a heading (e.g., ##) or is separated by ---. When rendered, Quarto executes any embedded code chunks and displays their output, such as tables or plots, directly on the slide.

Keep slides concise: aim for clarity, minimal text, and meaningful visuals rather than dense explanations.

Common challenges:

• Balancing detail and readability: avoid overloading slides with text or long code blocks.
• Consistent design: use concise titles and uniform font sizes.
• Cross-platform compatibility: check that revealjs slides display correctly across browsers; pptx output can render differently depending on the software used to open it.

As with reports, revealjs slides are HTML output, so if you’re submitting or sharing slides as a single file, apply the same embed-resources: true setting covered in the previous tutorial.

Reading

Learn more: Quarto Presentations Overview — Reveal.js Presentations — PowerPoint Presentations

Practice Exercise

Question

You have a Quarto HTML report analyzing exam scores and want to present the same analysis as a revealjs slideshow that you can safely email as a single file. What would you change in the YAML header, and what else would you likely still need to adjust in the body of the document?

Solution

In the YAML header, change format: html to format: revealjs and keep embed-resources: true so the slideshow stays a single, portable file. In the body, you would still need to reorganize the content into slide-sized chunks, adding headings or --- separators to mark where each new slide begins, and trimming dense text down to the key points.