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Converting PowerPoint Presentations to a PDF Document - Office 2003

PowerPoint presentations are often too large to deliver efficiently on the Internet and some people may not have PowerPoint installed on their home computers to view the presentation.

For students this can cause considerable frustration, as documents are very slow to download and are not printer friendly. Here is the procedure to convert your Office 2003 PowerPoint presentations into a PDF document making it easy for students to download and print while keeping file size to a minimum.

Typical file sizes for Power Point Presentations

Comparison of file sizes for PowerPoint and the same file converted to PDF

To convert your PowerPoint presentations into PDF files, you need to use either the full version of Adobe Acrobat or a program called PDF995 which can be downloaded free from the PDF995 website http://www.pdf995.com. Note: This software is  not reviewed or recommended by TWU Instructional Design.  The free version of PDF995 displays a sponsor page in your web browser each time you run the software. If you would prefer not to see sponsor pages, you must upgrade the product for a fee.

Setting it Up.

Follow the directions below to convert your PowerPoint presentation to a PDF. Please note that some of the screenshots in this tutorial may differ depending on the version of Windows and Office you are using.

1. Open the PowerPoint presentation you want to convert to a PDF file.

2. From the File Menu, select Print.

 3. When the print dialog box appears, choose either Adobe PDF (if you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat installed) or PDF995 (if you have PDF995 installed) as your printer from the drop-down menu (see the appropriate figure below). 

4. Under the Print what: section, choose Handouts from the drop-down menu (see figure below).

 5. Within the Handouts area, select the number of slides to be printed on a page.

6. Click the OK Button.

7. Once you have given your file a name and chosen a location for the file to be saved, the PowerPoint presentation will then be converted into a PDF document. Depending on the number of slides and the content of the presentation, this could take a few minutes to complete

8. Once file conversion is complete, Adobe Acrobat Reader will open and the converted document should appear. It is recommended that you review the document at this time to make sure everything has been converted successfully.

9. You are now ready to add this file to your Blackboard course for students to download and print.

Information adapted from Niagara College Blackboard Support / August 2007

Resources.

Presenting with PowerPoint: 10 dos and don'ts:http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusiness/resources/technology/business-software/presenting-with-powerpoint-10-dos-and-donts.aspx

PowerPoint Design Tips: http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson787/PPDesignTips.pdf

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