Giving presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint is a common occurrence in many workplaces. While presenting slides, it can be helpful for the presenter to have access to speaker notes that include important details or talking points.
When you need a hard copy of your presentation, you may want to print your PowerPoint slides with or without the speaker notes, depending on your needs. Here’s a guide on how to print PowerPoint presentations both ways.
Why Print Presentation Notes?
There are a few key reasons why you may want printed speaker notes:
- Remember details while presenting – Speaker notes allow you to include more information than fits nicely on a slide. Having a printed version means you can reference extra details, data, citations, etc. as needed while presenting.
- Share extra information with audience – You can print slides with notes and hand them out to allow your audience to follow along and access the additional information.
- Review and edit your presentation – Printing your slides and notes is helpful for revising your PowerPoint before the final presentation. You can make edits by hand on the printed pages.
How to Print Slides With Speaker Notes
Printing slides with accompanying speaker notes only takes a few simple steps:
- Open your PowerPoint presentation and click “File” > “Print” in the top menu.
- Under the “Settings” section, click the drop-down box next to “Full Page Slides.”
- Select the “Notes Pages” option.
- Select any other print settings you want like page orientation, which slides to print, number of copies, etc.
- Click the “Print” button.
This will print each slide with the related notes below it in an easy-to-read format. If you just need the slides without notes showing, simply choose the “Full Page Slides” option instead of “Notes Pages” in step 3.
Tips for Printing Notes Pages
Here are some useful tips when printing PowerPoint notes pages:
- Edit long notes – If your speaker notes are very lengthy, you may need to condense them to fit on the printed page.
- Print a portion – Under print settings, you can choose to print only a custom range of slides/notes if you don’t need them all.
- Test first – Print one copy first to check formatting before printing all required copies.
How to Print Just Speaker Notes (Without Slides)
If you only need the speaker notes and don’t require the slide thumbnails printed, that’s easy to do as well:
- Go to the “View” tab and click “Notes Page.”
- Delete the slide thumbnail images on each page. This does NOT delete slides from your actual presentation file.
- Click “File > Print” and select the “Notes Pages” layout option.
- Print as normal.
Now you’ll get just the notes without slide images. This can be handy for creating a presenter’s script without visuals.
Extra Tips for Printing Presentations
Here are a few final best practices for printing PowerPoint files:
- Print in grayscale whenever possible to save printer ink.
- Use the PowerPoint handout options to print multiple slides per page.
- Try exporting the file as a PDF if your printer has issues printing the PPTX file directly.
We hope this guide gives you the power to easily print PowerPoint presentations with or without speaker notes to suit your needs! Let us know in the comments if you have any other questions.