Generally speaking though it is very likely that the characters and spacing will be slightly different, causing text to wrap differently, or even overrun, changing the visual look of the presentation, sometimes dramatically. * metadata describing the font characteristics that can be used to choose a similar replacement.
Sometimes it will find and use a very similar font, but not always - it will depend heavily on the specific font and also whether the PANOSE, Charset and Pitch Family* information is available. It does this in order to keep the presentation usable and editable. In a nutshell - when a presentation is using a font that you don’t have installed on your computer, PowerPoint will see that you don’t have the font, and will automatically substitute another font to use in its place. It’s a recipe for frustration and occasionally for heated exchanges between participants, as you struggle to figure out how the same file can look very different on two seemingly identical computers. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone about why your presentation looks different on their computer than it does on yours, then you’ve probably encountered this strange quirk of PowerPoint.
