print

New PowerPoint Page Number Print Feature!

A new feature snuck into PowerPoint unannounced (PowerPoint for Windows, Mac version coming soon, mobile/web versions – uncertain), and it is either fantastic or a frustration, depending on what you need! 

 

Traditionally making a print of slides for reference was a bit confusing as to what slide number was being referenced. We had the print page number, but this 6-up layout meant manually counting slides to know which slide number the thumbnail represented.

But now there is an option to add slide numbers outside the thumbnails!!

This feature has been turned on by default with a  recent Office update (note: I am currently running the Insider Fast, or Monthly Targeted, build and have not verified if this feature has rolled out to all update cycles – if you do not see it, it is coming soon). Go to FILE > OPTIONS > ADVANCED > PRINT > PRINT SLIDE NUMBERS ON HANDOUTS

Let’s look at this feature a bit closer and a scenario where it may not be as helpful as you had hoped. Here is my sample slide deck, 15 slides and 2 slides (#2 and #3) hidden.

Printing this slide deck as a 2-up handout WITH hidden slides included looks like this. We have the print page number and the thumbnail slide numbers look perfect:

But if we do not print the hidden slides, things may be a bit confusing. The print page number is still perfect, but the thumbnail slide numbers match the actual slide number not the slide show number. The hidden slides still count as numbers to the print out jumps from slide 1 to slide 4:

Good? Bad? Confusing? Helpful? Not Helpful?

I find the all of the above to be possible answers. The way I am explaining the thumbnail page numbers is they are the slide number, not the slide show number. So if you need to manually jump to a specific slide in a presentation – while presenting, that is the number to use. If you are looking to confirm how many slides are in a presentation, this may not be the accurate number (if there are hidden slides in the deck).

Troy @ TLC

By |2018-11-26T12:44:19-07:00November 26th, 2018|PowerPoint, Software/Add-Ins|

Better, Bigger, 2-Up PDFs

Note: this is a re-post, originally posted April 4, 2016. When planning the posts for this month it made sense to include this tutorial again.

Printing slides is a common need. But the Microsoft presets are not optimal. For example, let’s look at “2-up” printouts directly from PowerPoint and then we’ll look at my preferred option which is using Adobe Acrobat to create the 2-up PDF printout.

Using Microsoft’s PowerPoint preset:

1. Go to File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document

2-up PDF printout Export_Image1

2. In the PUBLISH OPTIONS section, change the drop down menu to HANDOUTS. Slides per page = 2. Keep HORIZONTAL setting. A print preview of the pages will be on the right.

2-up PDF printout PPT_Image2

Select OK and your PDF will be created.

2-up PDF printout PPT_Image3

 

But, these can be larger images of each slide if we do not use the PowerPoint preset.

 

To create 2-up printout using Adobe Acrobat (Note: This is a multi-step process, but the result is great):

1. Go to File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document. This time don’t worry about the options, just create PDF with 1 slide per page (the default print setup).

2upBlog_1upPDF_Image4

2. Now we are going to print the PDF again. From the PDF of the slides, Go to File >Print

2-up PDF printout PDF_Image5

3. Select ADOBE PDF as your printer.

4. In the Page Sizing and Handling select MULTIPLE.

5. In Pages Per Sheet select Custom.

6. Set to 1 by 2, the small print preview should look like the below example.

7. PRINT.

2upBlog_PrintPDFoptions_Image6

As you can see, side-by-side, the Adobe Acrobat 2-up PDF printout on the left has larger slide images than the PowerPoint 2-up printout, the Adobe Acrobat 2-up takes up the page significantly more than PowerPoint does.

2upBlog_2upPDF_Image72upBlog_2upPPT_Image3

Just a simple option to provide better printouts. 

-Troy @ TLC

By |2018-04-04T11:29:56-07:00April 13th, 2018|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

2-Up PDF Printout of PowerPoint Slides

Printing slides is a common need. But the Microsoft presets are not optimal. For example, let’s look at “2-up” printouts directly from PowerPoint and then we’ll look at my preferred option which is using Adobe Acrobat to create the 2-up PDF printout.

Using Microsoft’s PowerPoint preset:

1. Go to File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document

2-up PDF printout Export_Image1

2. In the PUBLISH OPTIONS section, change the drop down menu to HANDOUTS. Slides per page = 2. Keep HORIZONTAL setting. A print preview of the pages will be on the right.

2-up PDF printout PPT_Image2

Select OK and your PDF will be created.

2-up PDF printout PPT_Image3

 

But, these can be larger images of each slide if we do not use the PowerPoint preset.

 

To create 2-up printout using Adobe Acrobat (Note: This is a multi-step process, but the result is great):

1. Go to File > Export > Create PDF/XPS Document. This time don’t worry about the options, just create PDF with 1 slide per page (the default print setup).

2upBlog_1upPDF_Image4

2. Now we are going to print the PDF again. From the PDF of the slides, Go to File >Print

2-up PDF printout PDF_Image5

3. Select ADOBE PDF as your printer.

4. In the Page Sizing and Handling select MULTIPLE.

5. In Pages Per Sheet select Custom.

6. Set to 1 by 2, the small print preview should look like the below example.

7. PRINT.

2upBlog_PrintPDFoptions_Image6

As you can see, side-by-side, the Adobe Acrobat 2-up PDF printout on the left has larger slide images than the PowerPoint 2-up printout, the Adobe Acrobat 2-up takes up the page significantly more than PowerPoint does.

2upBlog_2upPDF_Image72upBlog_2upPPT_Image3

Just a simple option to provide better printouts. It also works for 3-4-6-8-up printouts!

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T08:27:31-07:00April 4th, 2016|Tutorial|

PowerPoint Document Portfolio Sample

Adobe InDesign is our preferred layout application for print design projects. But it is not a widely used application in Office environments. Microsoft Word can be difficult to work with in documents that need to be flexible with content layouts. Design project requests for a “PowerPoint Document,” a PowerPoint file designed specifically for PDF or laser print output (not slide shows), continue to grow. And applying our formal print design background helps these documents stand out from “standard” Word and PowerPoint styling and be a visually “professional” print design piece.

PowerPoint Document

This single sided print piece (client content removed) is an example of a PowerPoint Document design project.

  • Letter size page (8.5×11″)
  • Portrait orientation
  • Clean, easy to read and professional print layout (content flow, smaller font sizes, alignment, etc.)
  • Off-slide indicators of editable text areas end user can modify
  • Customize PowerPoint template attributes to help maintain corporate branding guides (customized color scheme, default fonts, default shape attributes, etc.)

-Troy @ TLC

 

By |2016-08-10T08:43:32-07:00January 27th, 2016|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

WWE Collector Poster Series

This is a print design project that spanned much of last year where we developed a collector series of large (24″x36″) posters featuring classic WWE superstars. Definitely makes things fun at TLC Creative when you walk around and have one designer working on a presentation about life saving medical treatments and the next designer developing a larger than life Hulk Hogan! Hope you were able to get to the 4 special WWE live events and collect all 4!!

WWE-collage

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T08:46:09-07:00January 13th, 2016|Portfolio|

The Magic Poof Tradeshow Booth

TLC Creative Services does a lot of graphic design projects outside the presentation world. Here is one fun, “traditional” graphic design project from last year. The creator of the Magic Poof (a great children’s book series) asked TLC to use our creativity to design a fun, imaginative and memorable tradeshow booth for the Las Vegas Licensing show. We brainstormed a few concepts and then worked with the book illustrator to get some custom character art to bring Ange-Marie’s bedroom to real-life scale as a photo op for attendees.

Magic Poof Tradeshow Booth

Print design for three 8′ tall large format banners, large format floor cling, event business cards and promo flyers.

– Troy @ TLC

 

 

By |2016-08-10T08:47:21-07:00January 8th, 2016|Portfolio|

PowerPoint for Print Poster Design

“PowerPoint Documents” is our internal term for using PowerPoint as the design tool for print/PDF documents. These do not use slide transitions, animations, or other “presentation” features. This example is a part of previous post project (sync’ing narration to animated slides), where in addition to the presentation design we developed a 24″x36″ poster that visually coordinated with the presentation design.

SofnetPosterImage_1 SofnetPosterImage_2

Note: Typically we would design this in Adobe InDesign for assure print quality, full bleed design, etc.

The request was to develop in a PowerPoint so edits could be completed by the client for each talk. We setup with a custom page size, optimized the graphics for the larger slide size, added the requested content. The end deliverable was the 2 posters, 2 slides in a PowerPoint document. The client was able to revise content, create PDFs to send out or print (and we included print quality specifications regarding PDF from PowerPoint resolution).

– Troy @ TLC

 

By |2016-08-10T09:05:34-07:00July 8th, 2015|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

PowerPoint for Print Document Design (Really!?)

PowerPoint is designed for visual presentation design and projection. I clearly remember several meetings and discussions with Microsoft as they worked on PowerPoint 2007 about improving the print capabilities of PowerPoint – the laser printer, handout, PDF capabilities. Fast forward to Office 365 and PowerPoint 2013 and I am seeing a significant number of project requests and forum questions on how to use PowerPoint to design print documents. For this full month, ThePowerPointBlog is focusing all posts on using PowerPoint for print document design.

PowerPoint for print 2

Before we dive in with showing examples of PowerPoint for Print projects TLC Creative has done or providing tutorials on how to setup PowerPoint for print, let me establish a few technical terms and perspective:

  • Quick Print and Laser Print: This is printing a document on a black/white or color laser printer, it can be sitting on your desk or a large system at a Kinkos. They all have the same traits, digital printing and not capable of printing to the edge of the paper.
  • Offset Printing: This is “real” printing. Print design files are output to separated film and each plate is applied as individual passes of ink. From the printer, the paper needs to go to finish cutting to have a ready-to-use print document. Note: Offset printing can have the print image go to the edge of the paper.
  • Resolution: Web and presentation images are 72DPI – or low resolution (and this is a big generalization for the sake of an easy conversation). Print (eg. offset press) is 300DPI – or high resolution.
  • Vector Graphics: Images, or text, that are based on geometric shapes and mathematical equations (see that high school geometry class was important after all!). Note: Vector graphics can be enlarged to any size without quality loss.
  • Raster Graphics: Images that are created from dots or pixels. Note: The image is at a set size and enlarging lowers the visual quality.
  • Bleed, Printer vs. Reader spreads, CMYK vs. RGB, and many other print industry terms need to be understood by those using PowerPoint to create print documents.

 

So, why am I qualified to lead a discussion on PowerPoint-for-Print? Because before digital printers had quality output, and before PowerPoint (Flash, Director, and Harvard Graphics) made it easy enough for virtually anyone to create layouts, I worked in the print industry turning design files into separated film plates for the printing press operators. I am not saying I am old, but as a youngster I was lucky enough to enter the design industry as the digital revolution was in process. I experienced the true printing process and learned the classics of visual design – all great things that carry over into the wonderful world of PowerPoint presentations.

PowerPoint for print 3

Because now, everyone has a computer – tablet – and smartphone that has PowerPoint (thanks Microsoft for making Office available everywhere!), everyone can now use PowerPoint to design more than slides. In addition, the ease of sourcing images, video, custom fonts, design accent graphics and low cost printing all have created an environment in just the past few years for PowerPoint to become the default print design application – if only it did not have so many limitations!

Next post is “PowerPoint vs. Word vs. InDesign – which should I use?“

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T09:08:03-07:00March 2nd, 2015|Personal, Resource/Misc|

Duarte Releases SlideDocs ‘Book’

If you have used PowerPoint to create a print document that was never intended to be projected as a slide show, fear not, you are not alone. TLC Creative Services has been creating lots of projects over the past few years that we internally refer to as “PowerPoint Documents.” Nancy Duarte has release a new “book” all about using PowerPoint for non-slide show documents called “SlideDocs.”

The downloaded book is a giant example of how PowerPoint is used for document design, because it is a PowerPoint file.

The core message of SlideDocs, which I agree with, is there are a range of documents. On the left are formal print design documents. On the right are slide show presentations. In the middle are print documents that are designed in PowerPoint.

I recommend everyone, especially clients, read SlideDocs if nothing else for the overview of graphic design and layout principles in the middle section. Get more info and download the free SlideDocs book and templates here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T09:47:41-07:00March 20th, 2014|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Business Owner One-Sheet (Portfolio)

This print project came to us as a folder of scanned images, Word documents and PDFs. TLC Creative Services took all of the information and content and crafted it into a print-ready document that displayed the information in a stylized layout.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-10T09:59:25-07:00December 23rd, 2013|Portfolio|
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