A Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion is a visual aid for your talk. Digital notes help you to keep your pre­sen­ta­tion as clear as possible and avoid for­get­ting any important content. In case of technical com­pli­ca­tions, it makes sense to print out your pre­sen­ta­tion notes to have a hard copy on you. We will provide you with step-by-step in­struc­tions on how to print your Pow­er­Point notes and be fully prepared for your pre­sen­ta­tion.

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How to print Pow­er­Point slides with notes: step-by-step in­struc­tions

If you have prepared important notes on your Pow­er­Point slides, you should print them. This will provide you with a back-up plan in case of technical issues and also help you if the notes are difficult to read on the screen. Pow­er­Point provides a practical solution for printing your Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion notes. Follow these step-by-step in­struc­tions to learn how to create and edit a print version of your notes.

Tip

For more in­for­ma­tion on how to create digital Pow­er­Point notes for your pre­sen­ta­tion, check out our article How to easily create Pow­er­Point notes.

Step 1: Opening the print settings

Select the “File” tab located in the menu.

Then, left-click on “Print” to open Pow­er­Point’s print settings.

Step 2: Printing Pow­er­Point notes

Pow­er­Point will then open the print settings for printing your pre­sen­ta­tion. Under the heading “Settings”, click on the drop-down menu dis­play­ing “Full Page Slides” to bring up ad­di­tion­al options to choose from.

Tip

Pow­er­Point provides keyboard shortcuts to allow you to open a variety of functions even faster. For example, to quickly access the print settings, you can press the keyboard keys [Ctrl] and [P] at the same time.

In the ad­di­tion­al options menu, select “Notes Pages” under “Print Layout”.

Step 3: Con­fig­ur­ing ad­di­tion­al print settings

The program will show you a print preview on the right-hand side. If you print your entire pre­sen­ta­tion in Pow­er­Point with notes, each page will contain one slide and its cor­re­spond­ing notes. There are several drop-down menus available with ad­di­tion­al print settings if needed. If you make any changes to the settings, Pow­er­Point will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly reflect these changes in the print preview. Portrait layout is the default setting when printing notes. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, you can also select landscape layout for printing. Ad­di­tion­al optional settings include color settings and double-sided printing (as long as your printer supports the option). Once you have con­fig­ured all the settings, you can start printing by left-clicking on the “Print” button.

How to print notes without slides

You also have the option of only printing Pow­er­Point notes (without their cor­re­spond­ing slides). However, this requires a little manual work since you have to remove the slide thumbnail for each notes page involved.

Select the “View” tab located in the menu and then click on “Notes Page”. To delete the slide thumbnail, left-click on it to select it and then press the [Delete] key on your keyboard. Repeat this step until you have removed all the slides (i.e. their thumb­nails for the print version). Then, follow the in­struc­tions found under “How to print Pow­er­Point slides with notes” to print out your notes.

Notes Master: creating layouts for your notes

Using the Pow­er­Point Master Views, you can define uniform settings which the program will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly apply to all your slides. This function can also be used for notes, such as to prepare them to be optimally printed later on. Follow our step-by-step in­struc­tions to configure the general Notes Master settings.

Step 1: Opening Notes Master

Open Notes Master by going to the “View” tab and left-clicking on “Notes Master”.

Pow­er­Point will then open a new section. The pre­sen­ta­tion software will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly apply any settings you define here to all the notes in your pre­sen­ta­tion. We will use two examples to il­lus­trate which settings can be defined in this section.

Changing the sizes of the different areas

So, you need the size of your notes to be readable, but the slides them­selves are fine as small images. In this case, you can adjust the di­men­sions of these two areas. To do so, left-click and hold the edge of the frame for the section you want to adjust and drag it to the desired size.

Changing the font

To change the text font of notes, left-click on the frame for the notes. Then, select the “Home” tab and define all the font settings in the “Font” section.

Step 2: Applying the Notes Master settings

After defining all your settings, select the “Notes Master” tab from the menu bar and click “Close Master View”. Pow­er­Point will then au­to­mat­i­cal­ly take those settings and apply them whenever you print your Pow­er­Point slides with notes (or when you only print the notes).

Pow­er­Point comments: creating practical notes

Comments are another way to add notes to your slides. The advantage these have over notes is that you can add multiple per slide. Comments are applied to in­di­vid­ual sections and are great for inserting notes (e.g. for col­leagues) during the prepa­ra­tion stage. Unlike notes, these are not displayed to the speaker during the pre­sen­ta­tion.

Creating comments

To create a comment, proceed as follows: In the Normal View, left-click on the slide you want to add a comment to. Then, click on the “Insert” tab and select “Comment”.

A speech bubble icon will appear on the selected slide to mark your comment. Click on the white text field located on the right-hand side of the screen in the comments section and enter your comments. To close the comments section, click on the “X”.

Printing comments

Pow­er­Point allows you to print comments with your pre­sen­ta­tion slides. Just like when you are printing notes, go to “Home” > “Print”. Under the heading “Settings”, click on the drop-down menu labelled “Full Page Slides”.

Note

If you last printed Pow­er­Point notes, the drop-down menu will display the “Notes Pages” option.

Then, click on “Print Comments” and a check mark will appear next to the option.

In the printout, the slides will only display the speech bubble icons. The program will print the comments them­selves on separate ad­di­tion­al pages. You should keep in mind that this would increase the total number of pages printed.

Tip

You can save paper by printing multiple slides on a single page. To do this, select the desired number of slides per page from the “Handouts” section located in the same drop-down menu.

Pow­er­Point notes: in­creas­ing your print options with Microsoft Word

In the Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion software, the editing options and print settings for notes are limited. By exporting them as handouts and sending them to Microsoft Word, you can use all the standard editing options in Word. For example, you can print multiple slides and notes on the same page. In the following, we will provide you with step-by-step in­struc­tions on how to export your pre­sen­ta­tion and use all the functions.

Tip

The pre­sen­ta­tion software Pow­er­Point and the word processor Word are directly available from IONOS as part of the Microsoft 365 package. Our bespoke packages provide the perfect office solutions for companies, the self-employed, and private customers.

Step 1: Creating handouts

Select the “File” tab and click on “Export” in the main menu.

Click on the “Create Handouts” option and then on the button located to the right with the same name.

Step 2: Sending handouts to Microsoft Word

Pow­er­Point will then au­to­mat­i­cal­ly switch to the Normal View and open the “Send to Microsoft Word” dialog box. In this dialog box, there will be a number of export options available. Select your desired page layout and confirm your selection by clicking “OK”. If you select the “Paste link” option, Word will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly apply any changes made to the Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion.

Step 3: Printing slides with blank lines (optional)

To leave space for hand­writ­ten notes on your slides later on, you can also send your pre­sen­ta­tion to Word with specially formatted lines. Pow­er­Point provides two options for this purpose: “Blank lines next to slides” and “Blank lines below slides” will create lines in the desired spot alongside your pre­sen­ta­tion. Select the desired checkbox and confirm your selection by clicking “OK”.

You will need to wait for the export to Microsoft Word to be completed. Then, you can modify the document as usual in Word or print it out without making any ad­di­tion­al changes.

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