Locate Your Version in PowerPoint 2019 for Windows

Where is PowerPoint 2019?

Are you unable to locate PowerPoint 2019 on your computer? Sometimes, such a question can be embarrassing! Or are there other versions of PowerPoint on your computer; maybe older versions? Yes, we know that this can happen, although it does sound a little strange. However, there are perfectly valid excuses for you to be unable to locate PowerPoint, mainly in scenarios such as these:

• In an office, where system administrators are responsible for what's installed on your computer, and they insist that you have PowerPoint on your system. However, you cannot find it!
• You bought a new desktop or laptop that came with a license for Microsoft Office.
• Or maybe you just lost the shortcut that used to launch PowerPoint.

Follow these steps to locate PowerPoint 2019 for Windows:

1. Bring up the the Run window, as shown in Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Run Window
3. If you don’t know how to bring up the Run window, look at our Launch Run in Different Versions of Windows tutorial.
2. Within the Run window, type “powerpnt.exe” without the quotes as shown in Figure 2, and click OK.
3. 
   Figure 2: PowerPoint being summoned through the Run Window
3. If you have PowerPoint installed, it should launch now; otherwise you'll see an error message. In case a version of PowerPoint that is different from the one you were expecting launched, we suggest you follow the steps explained later in the Which Version Do we Have? section.

Which Version Do We Have?

That's a great question! The easiest way to find an answer is to bring up a list of programs installed on your computer. Bring up the Run window as explained in the preceding section of this tutorial, and type appwiz.cpl. Then hit the Enter key. Depending upon your Windows version, the resulting dialog box may look a little different but you still get a list of all programs on your computer. Since this is an alphabetical list, scroll down to where you can see all programs preceded by the words Microsoft Office, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: List of all programs installed on your computer

Note that we have three versions of Microsoft Office installed (highlighted in red within Figure 3, above). Yes, it is acceptable to have more than one version of Microsoft Office (and PowerPoint) installed on a single system. However, only one of these can be the default PowerPoint version. Your default version is the one that launches when you type powerpnt.exe in the Run dialog box, as explained in the preceding section.

So how do you change the default version? Typically the last version installed is the default version, but there are other ways to change the defaults, and we explain these options in our Set as Default Version in PowerPoint 2019 for Windows.

We Have Word, Why Can't We Find PowerPoint?

Even if you have Microsoft Office installed, that doesn't mean you have PowerPoint as well. The reason is that there are some Office editions which do not include PowerPoint; this is not so true with newer releases. If you have a version of Office 2019 without PowerPoint, it may also be that you choose a custom installation option for Office, and deselected PowerPoint? The solution is to run a Repair installation, as explained earlier on this page, and now select PowerPoint from the installation options.