PPT Handouts are a special rendering of your slides to be printed out for your audience.
PowerPoint Handouts are a special rendering of your slides to be printed out for your audience. It’s one of the ‘PowerPoint support materials‘ including Notes.
In this article we show how to make and print PowerPoint handouts.
Printing Handouts
There are various ways in which the handouts can be printed. You can choose to print the number of slides per page ranging from 1 to 9 slides, select the page format and select the colour scheme for the printout. You may also like to change the look, position, and size of the header and footer text, date, or page number on all of your handouts. However, it may be cumbersome to do this on each slide separately. To overcome this problem PowerPoint has a feature known as Handout Master. Using Handout Master you can make changes to various features of the page like header, footer, date, page setup, background theme, etc. Whatever change you make applies to all the slides and need not be made again individually.
Handout Master
To access the “Handout Master” click View | Presentation Views | Handout Master
Under this the following options are available to change the format of the handouts:
1. Page Setup
1.1. Page Setup: In this tab you can select either the portrait or Landscape option to print the handouts and slides. You can also choose the slide size and number of slides to apply this format.
1.2. Handout Orientation: If you want to separately select the page appearance of handout i.e. either Portrait or Landscape then it can be chosen under this tab
1.3. Slide Orientation: If you want to separately select the page appearance of slide i.e. either Portrait or Landscape then it can be chosen under this tab
1.4. Slides per Page: Under this tab you can choose the number of slides to appear on each page like 1, 2 or even 9 miniature slides per page. In the three slides per page handout option there is space to include lined text for taking notes by the audience.
2. Placeholders: Under this tab you can choose to place the editable options like Header, Footer, Date and Page Number. These options can either be selected or left out by ticking the respective checkbox. It can also be edited accordingly.
3. Edit Theme: Under this tab you can choose the various colour schemes, fonts, effects and themes for the handouts
4. Background: Under this tab you can customize the background appearance of the handouts. There are many options to choose from. Only the background of the handout changes. You can also customize your own background like use the company logo as background on all the slides. The brightness and contrast of the background images can also be modified.
5. Close: The “Close Master View” button when clicked closes the Handout Master and takes control back to the presentation
Now as example let’s take a PowerPoint presentation and using the options in Handout Master prepare it for taking a printout. The below shown image of the handout layout has the following selection in Handout Master after choosing the respective options: 6 slide thumbnails per page, Landscape orientation for handout and Portrait orientation for the slides, Header, date, footer and page number is appearing in every handout since these options have been checked in the Placeholder, Gradient background is selected for the Handout.
Once these format changes have been made to the handouts you can close the Hand Master View and go ahead and print the Handouts.
In order to print the handouts you can either preview the settings before printing or directly print the copies. Follow the below given steps to print the handouts:
1. Open the Presentation for which you want to print the handouts
2. Click Office Button | Print | Print Preview
3. Under Print Preview there are following options to modify the appearance of the handouts in print:
a. Print: Before clicking the Print button you can choose options like whether you want to frame your handout, colour scheme for the print i.e. grayscale, pure black and white or colour
b. Page Setup: Here you can decide on the number of slides per page ranging from 1 full size slide to 9 small slides. Also you can choose from the Landscape or Portrait orientation for the handouts.
c. Zoom: Using this option you can enlarge the presentation to fit the window or resize it as you like.
d. Preview: After making the necessary modification you can preview each page before hitting the print button
e. Close: Once the Print job is done click the “Close Print Preview” button to return to your presentation
The example shown below displays the print preview of a handout with 3 slides per page. Below each slide is space for taking notes for the audience during the presentation. The presentation can also be printed in grayscale or pure black and white.
4. If you want directly print without going to the preview option then click Office Button | Print | Print
Here before clicking the OK button you can set options like name of the printer, printing the number of slides, Colour scheme for the printouts, Slides per page and number of copies of the printout. There is option to preview the print before actually printing it. In this way you can print the handouts as per the specifications mentioned.
Note
Although the maximum number of slides that can be displayed per page in PowerPoint is nine it is possible to print more than that using the PostScript printer.
Tips and Tricks Converting PowerPoint to WordTo make the Handouts more user-friendly it is convenient to convert it to Word documents containing thumbnails of the slide along with space for the audience to take notes while viewing the presentation. Also PowerPoint presentation file sizes are usually large due to graphics. Hence if it is required to email the presentation to someone for review it is always better to send the content outline in word document instead of the entire presentation.
In order to print presentation in Word Click Office button | Publish | Create Handouts in Microsoft Office Word
On clicking the “Create Handouts in Microsoft Office Word” option the “Send to Microsoft Office Word” window opens.
Here you can select from 5 different options to print the layout of the handouts based on the slide and text placements. Next you can choose the “Paste” option to paste the content such that any update done to the presentation will not be reflected in the document. Whereas if you choose the “Paste link” option then any updates that occur to the presentation will be reflected in the document also. Once you click the OK button the PowerPoint presentation will be converted to Word document and it can be printed easily. Below is the screenshot of a presentation converted to Word document.
Notes:
In the above layouts you can either choose to print blank lines next to the slides or written notes to refer next to the slides. Also in PowerPoint only for 3 slides per page option area for taking notes appear. This drawback can be overcome in Word document since notes can be added to any slide irrespective of their number and also notes can be added on ruled lines or blank spaces.
Save to PDF options
We’re obliged to Office Watch reader Chris for pointing out the largely hidden options for saving part of a presentation to a PDF file.
In the standard Print dialog the choice of printing Slides, Notes Pages, Handouts or Outline view is clearly available under ‘Print what’.
When you choose to ‘print’ or save to PDF or XPS file the same option isn’t so obvious.
Chris points out that if you dig into the ‘Options’ button (from Save As | PDF or XPS) then select what you want.
See Also
- Change default slide number in PowerPoint
- Powerpoint save and publishing options
- Photo Albums in PowerPoint
- PowerPoint – Notes options and views
- Powerpoint – beyond slides
