PowerPoint presentations are a staple in business meetings, lectures, and conferences. They help visualize ideas and keep audiences engaged. But what about the speaker notes you meticulously prepared? Knowing how to print notes in PowerPoint, either for yourself or your audience, can significantly enhance the presentation’s impact and your delivery. This guide will walk you through different methods to print your PowerPoint notes effectively, ensuring you and your audience have all the necessary information at hand.
Printing Notes Pages with Slide Thumbnails
This is the most straightforward method for printing your notes. It includes a thumbnail of each slide along with the corresponding speaker notes. This format is helpful for audiences who want a visual reference alongside your talking points. Here’s how to do it:
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Open Your Presentation and Navigate to Print Settings: Begin by opening your PowerPoint presentation. Then, click on the File tab located in the top left corner of the PowerPoint window. From the File menu, select Print. This will take you to the Print settings page.
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Select Your Printer: Under the Printer section, choose the printer you wish to use from the dropdown menu. Ensure your printer is properly connected and ready to print.
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Configure Print Layout to Notes Pages: In the Settings section, you’ll see a dropdown menu that likely defaults to “Full Page Slides“. Click on this dropdown arrow. Under the Print Layout section of the expanded menu, select Notes Pages. This option configures PowerPoint to print each slide with its associated notes.
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Initiate Printing: Once you’ve selected “Notes Pages”, review your settings to ensure everything is correct. Then, click the Print button to start printing your notes pages.
Important Note: When printing notes pages with slide thumbnails, each page will contain only one slide and its corresponding notes. This ensures readability and clarity for both the slide image and the notes text.
Printing Notes Pages Without Slide Thumbnails
Sometimes, you might prefer to print only the speaker notes without the slide thumbnails. This can be useful if you want to save paper or if your audience is primarily interested in the textual content of your notes. Removing slide thumbnails requires a few extra steps within PowerPoint’s Notes Page view:
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Access Notes Page View: First, you need to switch to Notes Page view. To do this, click on the View tab on the PowerPoint ribbon. In the View tab, locate the Presentation Views group and click on Notes Page. This will display your presentation in Notes Page view, showing each slide with its notes below.
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Delete Slide Thumbnails: In Notes Page view, navigate through each slide. You’ll see the slide thumbnail at the top of each notes page. To remove it, click on the slide thumbnail to select it. Once selected, press the Delete key on your keyboard. Repeat this process for each slide thumbnail you want to remove. Don’t worry, deleting the thumbnails here only removes them from the notes pages view and printouts; your actual slides in the presentation remain untouched.
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Return to Print Settings: After deleting the desired thumbnails, click File and then Print to go back to the Print settings.
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Select Printer and Notes Pages Layout Again: Just as before, choose your desired printer under the Printer settings. Then, under Settings, ensure that the Print Layout is set to Notes Pages (it should remain selected from the previous printing method, but it’s good to double-check).
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Print Your Notes: Finally, click the Print button. PowerPoint will now print your notes pages, but this time without the slide thumbnails you deleted from the Notes Page view.
Print your notes pages
Important Note: Similar to printing with thumbnails, printing notes pages without thumbnails also results in one slide (or rather, the space where the slide thumbnail was) and its notes per printed page.
Exporting Speaker Notes to Word for Printing and Advanced Editing
For more flexibility in formatting and printing your speaker notes, PowerPoint allows you to export them to Microsoft Word. This method is particularly useful if you need to heavily edit your notes, combine them with other documents, or utilize Word’s advanced printing options. Here’s how to export and print your notes via Word:
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Navigate to the Export Function: With your presentation open, click on the File tab. In the File menu, select Export. This will open the Export panel in PowerPoint.
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Choose Create Handouts: On the Export panel, you’ll see several options. Select Create Handouts. This option is specifically designed to export your presentation content, including notes, for handout purposes.
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Initiate Handout Creation in Word: Click the Create Handouts button. This action will open the “Send to Microsoft Word” dialog box.
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Select Notes Layout in Word: In the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box, you’ll be presented with different page layout options for how your slides and notes will be arranged in Word. For printing notes, the most relevant options are:
- Notes next to slides: This layout places the slide thumbnail to the side of the corresponding notes in a table format.
- Notes below slides: This layout places the slide thumbnail above the notes, similar to the Notes Page view in PowerPoint.
Choose the layout that best suits your needs.
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Choose Paste Option and Export: At the bottom of the dialog box, ensure the Paste option is selected. This ensures that your presentation content is embedded in the Word document. Then, click OK. PowerPoint will then export your presentation and open it as a new document in Microsoft Word.
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Print from Word: Once your notes are open in Word, you can utilize all of Word’s features. You can edit your notes, adjust formatting, and then print the document using Word’s print functionality (File > Print in Word). Word provides more advanced print settings than PowerPoint, allowing for greater control over the final printed output.
By exporting your PowerPoint notes to Word, you gain significant flexibility in how you handle and print your speaker notes, making it an excellent option for preparing comprehensive handouts or personal speaking aids.
Conclusion
Printing your speaker notes in PowerPoint is a valuable skill for anyone who presents regularly. Whether you choose to print notes pages with or without slide thumbnails directly from PowerPoint, or export them to Word for more advanced handling, knowing these methods ensures you and your audience can easily access and utilize your presentation notes. By following these steps, you can effectively print your PowerPoint notes and enhance the overall impact of your presentations.
