Printing in PowerPoint: Understanding Your Printing Options

Printing in PowerPoint

So, let's talk about printing in PowerPoint. The Print command is located under the File menu, and PowerPoint offers several options for printing your slides, such as different Layouts, which are pages that are formatted specifically for printing. For example, you can change your slides to a format more suitable for handouts because it's common for presenters to print out a paper copy for their audience. This lesson will introduce you to the most common printing options in PowerPoint.

Select the Slides to Print

If you click on the Print command, you will see a group of options called Settings. The first option is to select what slides to print, and although most of the time you will Print All Slides, you will have occasions where you will want to print a particular slide or maybe a set of slides. For example, imagine you are collaborating on a presentation, and you have printed a draft copy for you and your subject matter expert (or SME as they're called) to review. You need to make changes and send a final, hard-copy draft to your manager for a final review.

After you meet with the SME on the project, you make changes to only the first two slides. Using this option, you will not need to re-print the entire presentation. Re-print only the first two slides, add them to the slides you didn't change, and you are good to go for your manager. Simply enter the slides you want to print in the Slide box. Here are some helpful hints when entering the range of slides to print:

• If you want to print a range of slides, you can put it in this way: 1-10.
• If you want to print single slides, you can separate the slide number by a comma, for example: 1, 2, 5, 10.
• Or, you can combine different formats, for example: 1, 2, 5-10, which will print slides 1 and 2, and then the slides between 5 and 10.

In our scenario, we want to print only the first two slides. The range we would enter into the Slide box would be 1-2, or we could use 1, 2 - either one will work.

Choosing the Layout

The next option is choosing a Layout. If you click on the Full Page Slides option, you will see several layout options, such as printing full pages, pages with your notes, or the outline. A common layout here is to print your Notes Pages. As you create your slides, you can add your own speaking notes to each slide, then print the slide and notes to help you rehearse or to use during your presentation. In addition, you can choose different layouts for your handouts. Here you can choose how many slides per page you would like to print:

You can choose how many slides to print per page.