We all create slides and use the presentation feature to share them, but it’s nice for your audience to have something to take away with them like notes and handouts.
First things first… you’ve already designed and written your presentation, created the slides that you need.
I’m going to make the assumption (right or wrong), that you’re fine with ‘printing’. Although if you are reading this, then there’s a good chance that for you printing is more about slides than anything else.
Of course, it could be that you don’t print things out that much, because well – save the planet!
To print or not to print
This is the first question to ask yourself.
There are alternatives to actually printing out (on paper) the notes and handouts – you can make them into digital handouts, either send to your attendees or make available (intranet or internet).
On the other hand, it can be nice to have something physical to give out/takeaway.
File > Print > Notes and Handouts
The standard option for printing is File > Print, choose which slides and off you go.
However, under settings – you can choose what you want to print.
Notes Pages
The basic assumption is that notes refer to speaker notes, and of course they can do.
But if you don’t want to use it for that, then you can add in notes for your audience.
Before you print the notes out – you need to add some in.
Notes Section
On the normal view, there is a section for notes underneath the slide.
If you don’t have this section displayed, click on Notes (in the status bar), then you can resize it as needed.
Type in whatever text you want to share with your audience, you can also use the text formatting options to highlight specific information.
Printing Notes
Under Print Layout you can select Notes Pages.
This is a portrait page, with a single slide in the top half, and your notes in the bottom half.
Handouts
In the same option (as Notes in File > Print) you can see handouts, scroll the list down to see all of the options.
However, there is an alternative…
Create Handouts
In the backstage (File) options, choose Export (instead of Print), then Create Handouts.
As you can see in the image, this will export your slides into a Word document.
Select the layout that you want to use.
This can include your notes next to the slide, or blank lines so that your audience can make their own notes next to the slide.
The default is 3 slides to an A4 page.
Once in Word, you can edit the text or add information.
PDF Option
If you want to use these options, but not actually print to paper, you can use any of these options and print to PDF instead.
Change from the standard printer to Microsoft Print to PDF, or another PDF option (if you have a choice). Then choose any of these options and press print.
If you export the slides to Word, then you can print to PDF there.
If you want to get started with MS PowerPoint grab your copy of the PowerPoint 365 Quick Start Guide.
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