Printing Power Point Slides on Fewer Pages

AAE 320: Farming Systems Management

Paul D. Mitchell pdmitchell@wisc.edu

Suppose you have opened a Power Point presentation and now you want to print the slides.  However, the default print is one slide per page, which will have large font size and generally waste lost of paper and bulk up your class folder.  If you want to print the slides, but with more than one per page, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Open the print pop-up window by either choosing “File” then “Print” on the main menu, or right clicking on the presentation and choosing “Print.”

Step 2: On the lower left of the print pop-up window should be a “Print what:” pull-down menu.  The default is usually “Slides.”  If you choose “Handouts,” then the printing will be just of the handouts, but several per page.  Alternatively, if you choose “Notes Pages,” you will get lines beside each slide on which to write notes, with 3 slides per printed page.  Choose one or the other.

Step 3: Right below the “Print what:” pull-down menu is the “Color/gray scale:” pull-down menu.  Here you can choose whether you want the color.  If you are using a black and white print, I usually prefer “Pure Black and White,” since then Power Point does not print the color background of the slides.  However, you can leave it on the default “Color” or choose “Grayscale” as you prefer.

Step 4: If you chose “Handouts,” to the right of these pull-down menus (i.e., on the bottom right of the print pop-up window) you can choose the number of slides per page in the now active “Handouts” box.  The default is 6 per page, but you can choose 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, or 9 per page on the pull-down menu.  In addition, you can choose the ordering of the slides but clicking the appropriate “Order” circle.  The little white box to the right illustrates the ordering of the slides on the page.  The default is horizontal. 

Step 5: When you have set up the print the way you want, click the “OK” button on the bottom and the slides will print.