You may not immediately associate an office document with design tool Figma, however there are several use cases where you may actually need to turn your files into designs. For example, you may have brand assets in a PDF, PowerPoint or Word document that you want to quickly import into Figma. Or, you may have all your product content sitting in an Excel that you wish you could instantly bring into Figma to incorporate this content in your designs…

Transitioning from office files to Figma can be challenging and time-consuming, especially if you’re copying-and-pasting from one place to another. Luckily, with the help of a few Figma plugins, there are actually multiple ways to import any kind of file or document into Figma quickly, while retaining structure and design elements.

In this post, we’ll explore thebest ways to import common document and file types into Figma:

Quick guide to import any file into Figma

ℹ️ *This table covers the main document types and file formats, however office.to.design can also import the following files into Figma:OpenOffice, StarOffice and OpenDocument (.odp, .odt); Microsoft Works (.wps), WordPerfect (.wpd), AbiWord (.abw, .zabw), Lotus Word Pro (.lwp) and Hangul Word Processor (.hwp).

How to import office documents into Figma

The office.to.design plugin for Figma is a specialized tool designed to import any office document into Figma including PowerPoint, Word, Keynote and Pages files. This plugin automatically converts the content of your document into editable Figma layers, preserving the layout, typography and other design elements.

How it works:

• Run the plugin: Search for “office.to.design” in Figma Community’s plugin library and run it.
• Upload your file: Upload (or drag-and-drop) your office file into the plugin (supported formats include .pptx, .docx, .key, .pages, .odp and many more).
• Edit in Figma: The plugin will process the file and import it into Figma as editable layers.

Benefits:

• Quick and reliable conversion of Word and PowerPoint to Figma (especially if you’re looking to convert PowerPoint to Figma Slides).
• Accurate text, images and layout preservation.
• Works with all major office formats.
• This method is ideal for anyone who frequently works with Microsoft Office files and needs a quick and simple way to get the content of these documents into Figma.

How to import PDFs and Google Slides into Figma

If you don’t want to directly import your office files, an alternative is converting them into PDFs and then using the pdf.to.design Figma plugin to import the content.

How it works

• Export Google Slides as PDF: Go to File > Download > PDF
• Import the PDF into Figma: Run pdf.to.design in Figma and import your PDF.
• Edit in Figma: The plugin converts all content into editable layers that you can then change and move as you would normally in Figma.

Benefits

• Great for retaining high fidelity of original designs.
• Versatile for users who prefer working with PDF files.
• This method works best for complex layouts and designs that you want to maintain in Figma.

How to import Google Sheets and Excel files into Figma

Excel users can streamline their workflow by using the data.to.design plugin, which allows you to import structured data directly into Figma that you can then use in your designs.

data.to.design doesn’t import the Excel or Google Sheet as-is, but instead surfaces all the content from your Excel in Figma so you can directly apply this content to your designs and fill components with real content and data.

How it works:

• Prepare your spreadsheet: Organize your data into clean tables either in Google Sheets or Excel. If using Excel, save it as a .CSV file. If using Google Sheets, copy the link.
• Run the plugin: Search for “data.to.design” in Figma Community’s plugin library.
• Import the data: Upload your .CSV file to the plugin or paste the link to your Google Sheet.
• Apply data to your designs: The plugin will automatically create a dataset with all the content from your original Excel so you can preview and select the data you want to use in your designs, right in Figma.

Benefits:

• Automating design processes involving large amounts of content or data.
• Bringing your CMS or database right into Figma.
• With data.to.design, it’s effortless to go from Excel to Figma.

Give it a try!

Importing Microsoft Office files and other office documents into Figma has never been easier, thanks to plugins like office.to.design, pdf.to.design and data.to.design. You can forget copy-and-pasting from one place to another, and instead import the content of your documents as fully-editable layers.

Whether you’re transitioning from PowerPoint presentations to Figma Slides, bringing text content from Word to Figma, or designing with data from your Excel spreadsheets, these 3 methods ensure a smooth, efficient process while maintaining high-quality designs that you can actually manipulate right in Figma.