Layers missing and turning into Purple Rectangles when exporting PDF from Figma
This is a known Figma bug that can show purple boxes instead of images. Pitchdeck uses Figma's native PDF export, so the same problem can appear in Pitchdeck exports.
One suggestion that can help is to ensure the problematic layer is actually nested inside of the main Figma frame, as sometimes a Figma layer is "visually" positioned on top of your frame on the canvas, but the layer itself is still sitting outside of the frame; this seems to be related to why the problem occurs sometimes.
Frames used as slides should all be the same size
Please ensure all your frames are the same size; 16:9 ratio frames are recommended (for example, 1280x720 or 1920x1080) for the best presentation results across most monitors and TV screens.
Duplicating a Figma file or Figma page will duplicate its URL/password
Note that "duplicating" a Figma file (or "page" inside a Figma file) will also carry over its URL/password from the original once, so it's always best to create a blank one if you need a new URL.
This lets you maintain a separate presentation deck per page within a Figma file (or just use entirely separate Figma files to do this). You can have an unlimited amount of presentation URLs this way.
Google Slides only supports 'custom' Google Fonts
If you're using third party fonts to design your slides in Figma, and exporting your presentation for Google Slides, Note that Google Slides won't be able to render the font (even if it's installed on your computer), as it only supports any font that is available via Google Fonts.
Clicking the download button for an exported PDF or PPTX file not working
If you're clicking the Download button in the plugin confirmation export screen, but the file isn't downloading; restarting the Figma app (or closing/re-opening your Figma tab if you're using the browser version) should resolve the issue when you re-run the plugin and export your file again.
Misaligned editable text in PPTX file exports
This is often caused by text layers having a fixed width/height in Figma on the text layer's bounding box which is smaller than the size of the text content itself, which causes an incorrect position offset. Setting the text layer resize option in Figma to "Auto Height" should resolve this.
The other cause of this is usually a text layer in Figma that contains multiple line-height or font size values in the same block of text. Unlike Figma, unfortunately PPTX files only support a single/overriding line-height value per text layer, and having multiple font sizes per text block will also throw out the vertical flow in your PPTX file.
To resolve this issue, you can split out the text content inside of your Figma text layer with a different line-height or font size into its own layer, and position that where you need it to be in relation to the other text layer(s); this way each text block will have its own single line-height and font size value.
Pixelated image exports
If you're exporting a presentation while the image assets in Figma are still progressively loading, they may be exported looking pixelated, as the image wasn't fully loaded in the Figma file before it was exported. To resolve this, please ensure that all of the images have loaded 100% and are looking sharp inside the Figma file before exporting your presentation with the Pitchdeck plugin.
To help further with solving this issue, you can use the "Downsizer" feature in our TinyImage Figma plugin to shrink down your image fills to match their layer size, which will shrink their file size and ensure they load much faster in your Figma file.
Google Slides will downscale any image over 1600x1600 pixels
If you're exporting your designs to use in Google Slides, Note that Google Slides will automatically "downscale" any images in your deck that are bigger than 1600 pixels; this can cause them to lose some visual quality if you're exporting them to a .pptx file with larger images than the upper limit.
To help avoid this, if you select the Google Slides option in the export settings, Pitchdeck will automatically ensure your images sizes are capped at 1600px to avoid them getting compressed when imported into Google Slides.
Scaling your Figma Prototype embeds to fill the layer
Depending on the aspect ratio of your Figma layer/embed in Pitchdeck, you may need to change the Figma Prototype scaling option before copying the Prototype URL to paste into the Pitchdeck plugin to embed it into your layer.
When you open your Figma Prototype, if you click on the Options dropdown (in the top right of the header), then select the Fit Width scaling option before copying your Prototype URL to use in Pitchdeck as a layer embed, that should ensure the Figma Prototype embed scales up/down to the size of your Figma layer (as long as the aspect ratio of the Figma layer matches the aspect ratio of your Figma Prototype).
If you can't see the Fit Width option, you can also try manually updating your Figma Prototype embed's scaling= parameter in the URL to be scaling=scale-down-width, and this should ensure the Fit Width scale option is used to display your Figma Prototype.
Slides not uploading from the plugin, or images not loading in the web app
One reason this might be happening is if your ISP (internet service provider) is blocking the QUIC protocol. You can confirm this by opening up your developer console in the browser or in Figma and see the error message ERR_QUIC_PROTOCOL_ERROR.
There are a couple of workarounds for this issue:
- Switching to your mobile phone's Wi-Fi hotspot/tether for your computer's internet connection
- Disabling QUIC in your browser
The '100% of memory used' Figma memory leak issue
There's a rare/known bug where Figma will run out of memory while trying to extract SVG image data from certain complex layers; these usually include groups that contain multiple text layers or single complex text layers (often using a custom font, which requires more memory in Figma).
If you run into this error, the Pitchdeck plugin will display a notification at the bottom of the screen telling you which frame, and which layer specifically is causing the memory issue.
It will also tell you to click the "reload page" in the Figma warning dialog, and then once the page reloads, to add [PNG] to the start of the problematic layer name (for example, "[PNG] My original layer name"). This will let the Pitchdeck plugin know to fetch PNG image data for that specific layer instead of SVG image data, which resolves the memory issue.
Thin white line around image exports
Occasionally some images will contain a faint, thin white line around the edges. Figma does this if a layer isn't positioned on a rounded pixel value (for example, Y: 156.76 or X: 56.3) will automatically result in this sub-pixel line getting included in the export. To resolve the issue, please ensure that your layer positions are all rounded pixel values.
Gradients not supported for editable text in .pptx exports
If you're using a gradient fill(s) for a text layer in your Figma design, Pitchdeck will automatically take the first gradient fill and use the first color of that gradient as the "solid" color in your .pttx export.
Where to host .mp4 video files
One good option for hosting videos is Backblaze B2; you can sign up for a free account that gives you 10gb of free storage, and if you create a public storage bucket, you should be able to copy/paste the links for any video files you upload to it and drop that link to the .mp4 into Pitchdeck.
Another popular file hosting option is Dropbox, which will let you upload your .mp4 file, and use that link in the Pitchdeck plugin; Pitchdeck will automatically handle changing the ?dl=0 to ?raw=1 to ensure the link points directly to the video file (rather than the Dropbox website player).
GIFs embedded in Figma documents
Due to GIF export not being natively supported in Figma, any GIFs added "directly" inside your Figma designs won't be animated; to use animated GIFs, Add them as URLs inside the Pitchdeck plugin.
Blank file extensions using Figma desktop app on Windows
There's a known issue with the Figma desktop app (only on Windows), which also happens for normal file exports from Figma. When you go to save your file, you may see an "all files" label. If you ignore this and continue by clicking "Save", it should still save the file with the correct extension and allow you to open it as expected after it has downloaded to your computer. If it still saves the file with a blank extension, you should be able to rename the file to manually append the correct extension to the file name.
Google Slides 100mb file size limit
Google Slides has a 100mb limit per PPTX file getting imported; one workaround for this is to split up the PPTX file you'd like to import into smaller files (using a tool like this) and then upload them into your Google Slides file one at a time (which gets around the upload size limit issue, and still lets you have all the slides in one file).
Slow (or frozen) PDF exports
If your PDF exports are going really slow, it's likely due to having high-res/large image fills in some of the content and/or it can be related to having lots of large "Layer Blur" effects on your layers, which can both cause Figma to take a much longer time generating PDFs.
To help with the image fills issue, you can use the "Downsizer" feature in TinyImage to shrink down your image fills to match their layer size, which will shrink their file size and ensure they load much faster in your Figma file.
To help with the "Layer Blur" issue, you can convert these into flat image layers instead by right-clicking your layer in Figma -> Copy/Paste As -> Copy as PNG -> paste the layer onto the Figma canvas (CTRL + V on Mac, or CMD + V on Windows); then you can position the layer inside of your Figma frame/slide in the same spot, before hiding or deleting the original layer that you copied/pasted as a flat PNG.
Once you've finished downsizing the image fills in your Figma page and/or swapping out your Figma layers with "Blur" effects for flat images instead, re-running Pitchdeck and exporting your PDF again via the plugin should be much faster.
Editing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat shows dotted lines
This can be resolved by un-checking the "Show bounding boxes" toggle in the Acrobat Acrobat app sidebar while editing your PDF. Showing the dotted bounding box lines is something that Adobe enables by default while enter "Edit" mode when you have a PDF open in the app, but turning off the "Show bounding boxes" toggle will turn hide those from being displayed with one click.
PNG images and forcing background transparency
Pitchdeck will try to automatically detect if a layer contains areas of full transparency and set PNG as the default export format, otherwise it will be set to JPG. You can override this by adding [PNG] to the Figma layer name, or by setting the export setting format of any layer to JPG or PNG in Figma's right-hand column.
Install custom fonts that are missing in .pptx exports
Note that opening the exported .pptx file on a computer which doesn't have the fonts used in Figma installed will cause the text to look different than it does in the Figma design. Please ensure you install any required fonts or replace/substitute any missing fonts where needed.
Presentation URL expiry after 180 days
Presentation URLs will automatically expire after a 180 day period of inactivity (180 days after the link was last accessed and viewed); if you want to re-activate the URL after it has expired, Run Pitchdeck in the Figma file and click Upload Web Presentation.
Netskope blocking the Pitchdeck web app from loading
There is a known issue with Netskope blocking access to Firebase databases; to resolve this, please ensure you allow firestore.googleapis.com:443 (as per this thread).
VPN may be required in China
Note, if you're in China, the accounts server may be blocked by "The Great Firewall of China". If you're seeing an activation error, despite using a valid key, you will likely need to use a VPN to resolve the issue.
'An error occurred while loading the plugin environment'
This may happen in the Figma desktop app if the Use Developer VM debug setting in Figma is enabled by mistake; you can make sure it's turned off by right-clicking anywhere on your Figma canvas, hovering over Plugins, then hovering over Development, and making sure that the Use Developer VM is unchecked; after it is unchecked (and does not have a tick icon next to it), re-running the Figma plugin should work as expected.