How to Print PowerPoint with Notes: A Comprehensive Guide

PowerPoint presentations are a staple in meetings, lectures, and conferences. Often, presenters utilize speaker notes to keep themselves on track and provide additional context during their presentation. But what about sharing those valuable notes with your audience or keeping them for your own reference? This guide will walk you through different methods to Print Powerpoint With Notes, ensuring you can effectively distribute your presentation content and speaker insights.

Printing Notes Pages with Slide Thumbnails

This is the most straightforward method to print your PowerPoint presentation with notes, including a thumbnail of each slide alongside your corresponding speaker notes. This format is ideal for audience handouts as it provides a visual reference of the slide being discussed with the detailed notes.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Navigate to the File menu, then click Print.
2. In the Print settings, locate the Printer options and select your desired printer from the dropdown menu.
3. Next, find the Settings section, typically defaulting to “Full Page Slides”. Click on the dropdown arrow next to it.
4. Under the Print Layout section in the dropdown menu, choose Notes Pages. This option configures PowerPoint to print each slide with its associated notes.
5. Finally, click the Print button to send your presentation with notes to the printer.

Important Note: Each printed page will contain only one slide thumbnail and its accompanying speaker notes. This ensures readability and provides ample space for notes.

Printing Notes Pages Without Slide Thumbnails

Sometimes, you might prefer to print only the speaker notes without the slide visuals. This can be useful for personal review or when the audience primarily needs the detailed notes rather than slide visuals. Removing slide thumbnails requires a few extra steps within PowerPoint’s Notes Page view.

Follow these steps to print notes without thumbnails:

1. Switch to Notes Page view. Go to the View tab on the PowerPoint ribbon and select Notes Page. This will display your presentation in a format where you can see each slide and its notes individually.

2. Delete slide thumbnails. For each notes page, click on the slide thumbnail image to select it. Once selected, press the Delete key on your keyboard. Repeat this process for every slide thumbnail you want to remove.

   • Note: Deleting thumbnails in Notes Page view only removes them from this view and for printing notes pages; it does not delete the actual slides from your presentation.

3. Once you’ve removed the desired thumbnails, proceed to print. Go to File > Print.

4. Select your Printer under the Printer settings.

5. Under Settings, ensure you select Notes Pages from the Print Layout dropdown, just as you did when printing with thumbnails.

   Print your notes pages

6. Click Print to print your notes-only pages.

Important Note: As with printing with thumbnails, each page will contain notes for only one slide.

Exporting Speaker Notes to Word for Enhanced Printing Options

For more advanced formatting and printing options, PowerPoint allows you to export your speaker notes to Microsoft Word. This method offers greater flexibility in how you present and print your notes. You can edit the notes in Word, customize layouts, and leverage Word’s extensive printing features.

Here’s how to export and print notes via Word:

1. With your PowerPoint presentation open, go to File and select Export.
2. In the Export menu, click on Create Handouts.
3. On the “Create Handouts in Word” panel, click the Create Handouts button. This action will open the “Send to Microsoft Word” dialog box.
4. Choose a page layout option in the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box that suits your needs:
   • Notes next to slides: This layout places the notes beside a smaller version of the slide.
   • Notes below slides: This option puts the notes directly underneath each slide image.
5. At the bottom of the dialog box, ensure the Paste option is selected (this is usually the default and recommended option for live linking if you need updates later), and then click OK.

Your presentation notes will open in a Word document according to your chosen layout. From Word, you can further edit, format, and then print your speaker notes using Word’s printing functionalities.

Further Resources: For more detailed information on working with PowerPoint handouts in Word, refer to Edit or print PowerPoint handouts in Word.

See Also: To learn more about adding and managing speaker notes in PowerPoint, see Add speaker notes to your slides.

By mastering these methods, you can effectively print PowerPoint with notes in a way that best suits your audience and presentation goals, whether for handouts, personal review, or detailed documentation.