PowerPoint presentations are a powerful tool for conveying information visually, but sometimes your audience needs more than just the slides. Speaker notes are invaluable for presenters, providing prompts and extra details during a presentation. Distributing these notes to your audience can enhance their understanding and retention of the material. This guide will walk you through the different methods of how to print PowerPoint with notes, ensuring you can effectively share your presentation’s supporting information.
Printing Notes Pages with Slide Thumbnails (Quick Method)
The quickest way to print your PowerPoint presentation with notes is to include slide thumbnails alongside your notes. This format provides visual context for each note, making it easy for your audience to follow along. Here’s how to do it:
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Begin by clicking File in the PowerPoint ribbon, then select Print. This will take you to the print settings screen.
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Under the Printer section, choose your desired printer from the dropdown menu. Ensure your printer is properly connected and ready to print.
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Navigate to the Settings section. By default, it usually displays “Full Page Slides”. Click on the dropdown arrow next to Full Page Slides.
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In the expanded Settings menu, under the Print Layout section, you will see several options. Select Notes Pages. This option configures PowerPoint to print each slide with its corresponding notes underneath.
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Once you have selected “Notes Pages”, click the Print button at the top of the Print settings pane. Your PowerPoint presentation will now print, with each page containing a slide thumbnail at the top and the speaker notes for that slide below.
Print Settings dropdown menu in PowerPoint, highlighting the Notes Pages option for printing layouts
Note: Each printed page will contain only one slide and its accompanying notes. This ensures readability and sufficient space for both the visual and textual information.
Printing Notes Pages Without Slide Thumbnails (Manual Removal)
Sometimes, you might prefer to provide your audience with notes without the slide thumbnails. This can be useful if you want to save ink or paper, or if you believe the notes are comprehensive enough on their own. Removing slide thumbnails for printing requires a few extra steps:
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First, you need to switch to Notes Page view. To do this, click on the View tab in the PowerPoint ribbon, and then select Notes Page in the Presentation Views group. This will display your presentation in a format where you can see each slide and its notes individually.
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In Notes Page view, navigate through your slides. For each slide, you will see the slide thumbnail at the top and the notes section below. To remove the thumbnail, click on the slide thumbnail to select it. You should see selection handles appear around the thumbnail.
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Once the thumbnail is selected, press the Delete key on your keyboard. This will remove the slide thumbnail from the notes page. Repeat this process for every slide in your presentation.
Important: Deleting the slide thumbnail in Notes Page view only removes it from the printed notes pages. It does not delete the actual slides from your PowerPoint presentation. Your slides will remain intact for your slideshow.
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After removing all the desired slide thumbnails, proceed to print. Click File > Print to go back to the print settings.
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Again, under Printer, select your printer.
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In Settings, ensure that Notes Pages is selected under Print Layout, just as you did when printing with thumbnails.
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Finally, click Print. This time, your printed output will consist of pages with only the speaker notes, without the slide thumbnails.
Exporting Speaker Notes to Word for Printing (Advanced Options)
For more advanced formatting and printing options, you can export your PowerPoint speaker notes to Microsoft Word. This method gives you greater control over the layout and allows you to edit your notes in Word before printing. Here’s how to export and print your notes via Word:
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With your PowerPoint presentation open, click on the File tab, and then select Export. This will open the Export panel.
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In the Export panel, find and select Create Handouts. This option is specifically designed to transfer your presentation content, including notes, to Word.
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Clicking Create Handouts will open the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box. Here, you can choose how you want your notes and slides to be laid out in Word.
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In the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box, you will be presented with several page layout options. For printing notes, the most relevant options are:
- Notes next to slides: This layout places a smaller version of the slide next to the notes in a table format.
- Notes below slides: This layout places the slide thumbnail at the top and the notes below, similar to the “Notes Pages” print option, but in a Word document.
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At the bottom of the dialog box, you’ll see options for how the content is transferred. Select the Paste option. This ensures that the notes and slides are embedded in the Word document and can be edited. Then, click OK.
PowerPoint will now open Microsoft Word and create a new document containing your slides and notes based on the layout option you selected.
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Once the document is open in Word, you can format the notes further, edit text, adjust layouts, and utilize all of Word’s features before printing. To print from Word, simply go to File > Print in Word and adjust your print settings as needed.
By exporting to Word, you gain flexibility in how your notes are presented and printed, allowing for customization beyond PowerPoint’s built-in print options.
For more detailed information about exporting PowerPoint presentations to Word and further handout customization, refer to Microsoft Office support resources, such as the article on editing or printing PowerPoint handouts in Word.
Conclusion
Printing PowerPoint presentations with notes is essential for distributing comprehensive information to your audience. Whether you choose to print notes pages directly from PowerPoint with or without thumbnails, or export your notes to Word for advanced editing and layout, understanding these methods ensures you can effectively share your speaker notes. By following these steps, you can provide valuable supplementary material that enhances the impact of your presentations.
