how to print presentation with notes in powerpoint

How-To Geek

How to print just the speaker notes for a powerpoint presentation.

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Quick Links

How to print notes pages, how to print notes pages without slide thumbnails.

You've got your speaker notes set up in your PowerPoint presentation, and now you want to print a copy for quick reference. Here's how to print speaker notes for a PowerPoint Presentation---with and without slide thumbnails.

Open up your PowerPoint presentation and click the "File" menu on the Ribbon.

On the sidebar that opens, click the "Print" command.

On the Print pane to the right, click the "Full Page Slides" button.

You'll see a bunch of different printing options on the drop-down menu. Click the "Notes Pages" option.

This generates a printout of all your slides, with one slide thumbnail per page and any notes accompanying that slide. If that's what you need, select your printer and click the "Print" button.

If your presentation is lengthy or you have a lot of speaker notes, you can also print out those notes without printing thumbnails of the slides themselves.

Switch over to the "View" tab on the Ribbon and then click the "Notes Page" button. This switches you to the Notes Page view. On each page, you'll see a thumbnail of the slide and any accompanying notes.

Select the thumbnail on each page and delete it.

Don't worry! This does not delete the slide itself from your main presentation---just the thumbnail on the notes page. Repeat this step for each notes page.

Swing on over to the "File" tab and click the "Print" command.

Select the printer you want to use, make sure the "Notes Pages" option is selected, and then click the "Print" button.

If you've deleted the slide thumbnails from your notes pages and want to put them back, switch to the slide sorter view, right-click a thumbnail there and choose the "Copy" command, and then paste the thumbnail on the notes page where you want it.

• Microsoft Office
• Office 2016

How to Print PowerPoint Presentations with Notes

PowerPoint is a great tool for creating presentations, but sometimes you want more than just the slides when you print them out. If you've added notes to your slides—whether they're reminders for yourself or extra information for your audience—you can easily print them too. Let me walk you through the process of printing your PowerPoint slides along with your notes. It’s super simple!

 Why Print with Notes?

Printing your slides with notes is helpful in a lot of situations:

- Speaker Notes: Use the notes as a script or reminder of key points while presenting.

- Handouts: Provide detailed explanations to your audience without cluttering the slides.

Now that you know why you’d want to print slides with notes, let’s get into the “how.”

 Step-by-Step Guide to Printing PowerPoint Slides with Notes

 Step 1: Open Your PowerPoint Presentation

Start by opening the PowerPoint presentation you want to print. You’ll need to make sure that all your notes are in place.

 Step 2: Go to the "File" Menu

In the top-left corner of PowerPoint, click on the File tab. This will open a menu where you can find various options related to your presentation, including the printing features.

 Step 3: Select "Print"

From the left-hand menu that appears, select Print. You’ll now be in the print settings section.

 Step 4: Choose "Notes Pages" under Print Layout

In the Settings section, you’ll see an option labeled Full Page Slides (or something similar depending on your version of PowerPoint). Click on it, and a drop-down menu will appear.

From that menu, select Notes Pages. This layout will print one slide per page, along with any notes you’ve added below the slide.

 Step 5: Set Additional Print Preferences

Once you’ve chosen to print with notes, you can customize other settings like:

- Printer selection: Choose your printer from the dropdown list.

- Copies: Set the number of copies you’d like to print.

- Page orientation: Choose either portrait or landscape, depending on how you’d like the slides and notes to be arranged.

 Step 6: Print Your Presentation

When you're happy with your settings, click the Print button. Your PowerPoint slides, complete with your notes, will begin printing.

 Tips for Better Results

- Preview Before Printing: In the print preview window, you’ll see exactly how the slides and notes will appear on paper. It’s always good to double-check.

- Adjust Font Size: If your notes are lengthy, consider adjusting the font size in your notes section so they fit neatly on the page without getting cut off.

- Convert to PDF for Sharing: If you don’t have access to a printer right away or need to share the presentation, you can also save it as a PDF. In the Print menu, choose Save as PDF instead of selecting a printer.

 Wrapping It Up

Printing your PowerPoint slides with notes is a breeze once you know the steps. It’s a handy feature that helps both presenters and audiences get the most out of your presentation. Whether you’re giving a talk or sharing detailed handouts, these notes will ensure you don’t miss any important points.

So, next time you’re prepping a presentation, remember to add those notes and print them with ease!

Privacy Matters

Support.com is committed to your privacy We do not share or sell your data to third parties. We do use cookies and other third-party technologies to improve our site and services. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) gives you the ability to opt out of the use of cookies, third-party technologies and/or the future sale of your data. Do not sell my personal information .

Support.com is committed to your privacy Read our Privacy Policy for a clear explanation of how we collect, use, disclose and store your information

Critical PowerPoint Shortcuts – Claim Your FREE Training Module and Get Your Time Back!

How to Print PowerPoint with Notes (Step-by-Step)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Shortcuts & Hacks
• January 22, 2024

In this article, you’ll learn how to print your PowerPoint slides with speaker notes as handouts the way you want them.

Don’t get frustrated with PowerPoint… just get creative. That way you can get out of the office and make it to Happy Hour.

Just keep in mind that, like many things in PowerPoint, there is a variety of ways to print your notes, each producing its own result. I cover each method below.

NOTE:  If you are distributing your slides to other people, I highly recommend customizing your handouts with your company information before you print them. This not only makes your handouts look more professional, but it also makes it easier for people to get in touch with you.

For help turning your PowerPoint notes (without or without note text) into PDF handouts, read our guide here .

Table of Contents

How to print powerpoint with notes (basics).

The most common way to print PowerPoint notes is with the thumbnail image of the slide at the top of the page, and the notes directly beneath (as pictured above). To print your notes like this, simply:

• Hit Ctrl+P for Print (or click File then Print)
• Open the Print Layout options
• Select the Notes Page layout
• Click Print

If you want to print your notes only (without the thumbnail image), see further below.

As you can see in the live preview on the right in the picture above, I have already formatted the Notes Master to include my company’s logo, and my contact information.

If you have lots of speaker notes for a particular slide, the text may run off onto a second or third page. If this happens, keep in mind that your slide thumbnail only appears on the first page of notes.

Also keep in mind that the page number at the bottom of your handouts represents the slide number in your presentation, not the number of pages you are printing.

That means that if you have ten (10) pages of speaker notes for slide number 2 in your deck, each of those ten pages of speaker’s notes will have a number 2 on them.

To learn how to print multiple slides on one page in PowerPoint,  read our guide here .

NOTE: If you are distributing your notes as handouts before or after your presentation, I recommend customizing your Notes Master .

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Formatting the notes master for professional handouts.

To customize your notes page before you print it in PowerPoint first navigate to the Notes Master view.

• Click the View tab
• Select the Notes Master

The View tab in PowerPoint is also where you can find the Handout Master view (discussed further below), and the Slide Master view. These master views control the default formatting of your slides, handouts, and notes.

Once you are in the Notes Master view, you can select which placeholders you want to include in your handouts. In this view, you can also add any images, shapes, or other design elements to jazz up your handouts. I recommend adding things like:

• Your company logo
• Your email address (or contact information)
• Your company website

When it comes to formatting your handouts, more is not better. I recommend adding enough to make your handouts look professional and make it easy for people to contact you.

Printing PowerPoint Notes with multiple slides per page

To print your PowerPoint notes as handouts with multiple slides per page, you need to first export your PowerPoint slides to Microsoft Word using the Create Handouts command.

To convert PowerPoint to Word using the Create Handouts command, simply:

• Click the File tab
• Select Export
• Select  Create Handouts
• Click the Create Handouts command
• Select Notes next to slides

Doing so turns your PowerPoint presentation into a Word document, with all your slides and speaker notes in a table format that you can then update and edit in Microsoft Word. The length of your notes affects how many slides you can have on a single page in Word.

Table of Contents:  If you have a lot of slides you are converting into a Word document, you can make your Word document easier to read and navigate by inserting a table of contents. To learn how to make a table of contents in Word,  read our guide here .

How to print PowerPoint notes only

Yes, you can print just your PowerPoint notes (no slide thumbnail images) without messing up your presentation. I don’t recommend deleting things on your Notes Master, simply follow the steps listed below.

To see how to pull this off using a combination of the Create Handouts command and the Outline View in PowerPoint, see the short PowerPoint video tutorial below (it will make the most sense that way).

1. Push your PowerPoint slides to Microsoft Word

The first step is to push your slides and speaker notes into Microsoft Word. To do that, follow these steps:

• From within PowerPoint open the  File menu
• Click  Export on the left
• Select  Create Handouts  in the middle
• Click  Create Handouts on the right
• Select  Notes next to slides

PowerPoint then exports all your slides and speaker notes to Word in a table format. To make it easier to edit our table, let’s add borders to it.

2. Add table borders to your table to see what you are working with

Once PowerPoint finishes exporting your slides to Microsoft Word, I recommend adding table borders to see what you are working with. To do that, simply:

• Select the table in Word
• Click the Table Design tab
• Choose a table border style

While this is an optional step, it makes formatting your notes in Word a lot easier.

3. Format your PowerPoint notes in Word

As a last step, you simply need to make the formatting adjustments you want to your notes. These can include:

• Delete the thumbnail image column
• Resize the column widths
• Paste your slide title names in from the Outline View in PowerPoint
• Customize your handouts with your contact information
• Continue formatting in order to get your desired result

How to print PowerPoint with comments

Assuming you have comments in your presentation, you can print those in either the Handout view or the Outline view.

To print your PowerPoint slides with comments:

• Hit Ctrl+P for print
• Open the  Slide Layout options
• Choose how many slides you want per page (I recommend 6 or 9 so you don’t waste paper)
• Select  Print Comments
• Click  Print

It’s important to note that PowerPoint comments always print on the second page. Your first page will be the handouts themselves (with the comments marked on the slide). The second will be the actual comments.

As this tends to waste a lot of printer paper and ink, I recommend using the 9-slide layout unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.

How to print PowerPoint with lines for notes

There are two different ways to print your slides as Handouts with lines for notes:

The easy way: This involves directly printing your slides from PowerPoint with the default blank lines for taking notes.

The customizable way:  This involves converting your PowerPoint slides to Word, where you can then adjust and customize the lines for your notes.

Both options are covered below.

1. The easy way

To print your slides with  non-customizable  lines for notes (in PowerPoint):

• From within PowerPoint, hit  Ctrl+P for print
• Open the  Slide Layout  options
• Choose the 3-slide layout  with lines (you’ll see a live preview on the right)

NOTE:  You can customize this layout using the PowerPoint Handout Master the way I  described above .

2. The customizable way

To print your slides with  customizable blank lines for notes (Converting PowerPoint to Word):

• Navigate to the  File tab
• Click  Export
• Click on the  Create Handouts  button
• Select either Blank lines next to slides  or Blank lines below slides  (depending on what you want)

Once your slides export to Microsoft Word, you can do whatever you want with the lines. For example, you can decrease the paragraph spacing to add more lines if you like. You can also format them and make them bold.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about exporting your PowerPoint slides to Microsoft Word (and the different options you have),  read our guide here .

Printing an outline of PowerPoint

Before you get too excited about printing your PowerPoint outline, it’s important to note that only information that is within your content placeholders prints. That means that text inside regular shapes and text boxes doesn’t appear.

On top of that, an outline can only print text. That means that none of your graphics, charts or pictures show up in your printed document.

There are two different ways to print your outline: You can directly print your outline out of PowerPoint, or you can export your outline to Microsoft Word so that you can edit it before you print it. Choose the option below that works best for you.

1. Directly printing your outline from PowerPoint

To print your PowerPoint slides as an outline only outline, simply:

• Hit Ctrl+P on to open the print options
• Open the Slide Layout options
• Select Outline

Note: If you don’t see all the content in your outline (you only see the slide titles, for example) that means that your Outline View is collapsed.

To expand your Outline View, simply:

• Navigate to the View tab
• Click on the Outline View

Within the Outline View (click into that actual Outline View on the left), hit the expand keyboard shortcut: Alt+Shift+9 . To learn more about working in the Outline view in PowerPoint, read our guide here .

2. Exporting an editable version of your Outline to Microsoft Word

If you want to customize your PowerPoint outline in Microsoft Word before you print it, simply:

• Click on the  Create Handouts button
• Select Outline only

Pushing your outline into Microsoft Word like this allows you to customize and edit the outline before you print it.

So those are all the different ways you can print your notes in PowerPoint.

If you intend to print your notes as handouts for a business meeting or client presentation, I highly recommend formatting your Notes Master and/or Handout Master.

That way you can include your contact information and/or your company formatting, making your handouts look more professional.

If you enjoyed this in-depth PowerPoint tutorial, you can learn more about our online training courses and other presentation resources  here .

🔒 Unlock the PowerPoint Shortcuts Trusted by Industry Leaders KKR, American Express, HSBC, and More!

Join over 114,880 professionals from diverse fields including consulting, investment banking, advertising, marketing, sales, and business development who have supercharged their PowerPoint game with our proven methods.

✅ Customize compelling presentations effortlessly.

✅ Master time-saving techniques for faster deck creation.

✅ Boost your career prospects with top-notch PowerPoint skills.

Get FREE access to the Critical PowerPoint Shortcuts module of our premium training course by entering your name and email below.

DISCLAIMER: PC Users Only!

We respect your privacy and will keep your info safe and confidential.

Related Articles

About the author.

This Post Has 2 Comments

Thank you for this useful guide! Is there a way to print the outline with the notes per slide, too?

Hi Juliah and thanks for the question. Unfortunately not. The notes are tied to the slides and not the outline, so there’s no way that we know of to print the outline + notes together.

Comments are closed.

Popular Tutorials

• How to Strikethrough Text (l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶) in Word, Excel & PowerPoint
• How to Make Animated Fireworks in PowerPoint (Step-by-Step)
• Strikethrough Shortcut (l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶) for Word, Excel & PowerPoint
• How to Create a Flash Card Memory Game in PowerPoint (Like Jeopardy)
• Keyboard Shortcuts Not Working: Solved

PowerPoint Tutorial Categories

• Strategies & Opinions
• Presentation Design
• Pictures, Icons, Videos, Etc.
• New Features
• Miscellaneous
• Charts & Data Viz

We help busy professionals save hours and gain peace of mind, with corporate workshops, self-paced courses and tutorials for PowerPoint and Word.

Work With Us

• Corporate Training
• Presentation & Template Design
• Courses & Downloads
• PowerPoint Articles
• Word Articles
• Productivity Resources

Find a Tutorial

• Free Training
• For Businesses

We help busy office workers save hours and gain peace of mind, with tips, training and tutorials for Microsoft PowerPoint and Word.

Master Critical PowerPoint Shortcuts – Secure Your FREE Training Module and Save Valuable Time!

⌛ Master time-saving expert techniques.

🔥 Create powerful presentations.

🚀 Propel your career to new heights.

We value your privacy – we keep your info safe.

Discover PowerPoint Hacks Loved by Industry Giants - KKR, AmEx, HSBC!

Over 114,880 professionals in finance, marketing and sales have revolutionized their PPT skills with our proven methods. 

Gain FREE access to a full module of our premium PowerPoint training program – Get started today!

We hate spam too and promise to keep your information safe.

You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Facebook . To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers.

Byte Bite Bit

How to Print PowerPoint Slides with Notes: A Step-by-Step Guide

Navigating the world of PowerPoint presentations can be a bit like traversing a maze, especially when it comes to printing slides with notes. Fortunately, we’ve got the map to guide you through the process. Printing PowerPoint slides with notes is a straightforward task that just requires a few specific steps.

First things first, make sure you’ve entered all your speaker notes in the “Notes” section of your presentation. This can be your secret weapon during your presentation, giving you all the talking points without overwhelming your audience with too much text on the slides themselves.

When you’re ready to print, choose the Notes Pages option under Print Layout. This feature allows you to print out each slide alongside its corresponding notes. Customize your print settings, select the printer, and your slides will be presentation-ready.

• 1.1 Choosing the Right Layout Options
• 1.2 Adjusting Print Settings for Optimal Results
• 2.1 Working with Microsoft Word for Professional Handouts
• 2.2 Customizing Notes Pages for Audience Takeaways
• 3.1 Enhancing Visual Elements for Printed Copies
• 3.2 Ensuring Readability with Font and Object Scaling
• 4.1 Printing from Windows and Mac Operating Systems
• 4.2 Utilizing Web and PDF Options for Sharing

Setting Up Your Document for Printing

When preparing to print PowerPoint slides with notes, it’s crucial to choose the right layout options and adjust print settings for the best results. Below, we will explore how to achieve these goals effectively.

Choosing the Right Layout Options

Before hitting the print button, we need to select the appropriate layout for our presentations. Start by going to File > Print . Here, we encounter various layout options under the Settings section.

• Print Layout : Choose between full-page slides, handouts, or notes pages. For printing slides with notes, select Notes Pages .
• Orientation : Decide whether to print in Landscape or Portrait . Typically, Landscape is more common for presentations, but Portrait may suit certain documents.
• Color Options : Opt for Color , Grayscale , or Pure Black and White . If concerned about ink usage, Grayscale is a good compromise.

Carefully picking these settings ensures our printed slides and notes are clear and professional. Familiarity with each option lets us tailor the print layout to our specific needs.

Adjusting Print Settings for Optimal Results

To produce the best printed output, optimal print settings are crucial. In the Print dialog, under Settings , several adjustments can be made.

• Print Range : Choose to print all slides, specific slides, or a custom range. This helps focus on what’s essential.
• Scale to Fit : Ensure content fits properly on the page. Enable Scale to Fit Paper to avoid cutoff content.
• Print Quality : Higher DPI settings yield sharper images but consume more ink. Select a balance that suits our needs.
• Include Hidden Slides : Decide whether to print hidden slides by toggling on or off.
• Header and Footer : Add or remove headers and footers for additional context or documentation.

Adjust these settings to achieve clear, readable slides with notes. It’s a balance between quality and ink usage, ensuring the final print meets our expectations.

By focusing on these layout and print settings, we ensure our printed PowerPoint slides with notes are both effective and efficient.

Creating Handouts and Notes Pages

To create effective handouts and notes pages, we need to leverage the features of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. By customizing these tools, we can produce professional handouts and comprehensive notes pages for audience takeaways.

Working with Microsoft Word for Professional Handouts

We can use Microsoft Word to create polished and professional handouts. First , export the PowerPoint slides to Word by navigating to File > Export > Create Handouts . This function allows us to include slide thumbnails alongside notes or comments.

For a more customized touch, we can adjust the layout in Word. Use columns to rearrange content, add our company’s logo, and include any contact information or additional details needed.

Key tips for creating handouts in Word:

• Insert slide thumbnails.
• Use columns for a neat arrangement.
• Add company logos and contact information.
• Include any extra notes or comments for clarity.

This format ensures that our audience has a complete and easily readable document.

Customizing Notes Pages for Audience Takeaways

Notes pages in PowerPoint offer a versatile format to include detailed speaker notes beneath each slide. Adjusting the Notes Master view allows us to align content perfectly and add elements like headers or footers.

We can control how many slides per page to print by selecting Print > Notes Pages . This layout provides both the thumbnail image of the slide and space for extended notes. Customizing notes pages also allows us to incorporate comments or additional explanations specifically tailored to our audience.

Important customization points:

• Use Notes Master view for layout adjustments.
• Align text, add headers, company logos, and contact details.
• Determine the number of slides per page .
• Include comprehensive notes and comments.

By fine-tuning these elements, our notes pages become invaluable tools for the audience, serving as both a reference and a synopsis of our presentation content.

Optimizing PowerPoint Slides for Print

To create print-ready PowerPoint slides that look sharp and professional, it’s essential to focus on both visual elements and readability. Balancing these aspects ensures that your printed slides and notes pages are functional and visually appealing.

Enhancing Visual Elements for Printed Copies

When we print PowerPoint slides, clear and effective visuals are key. First, ensure images and graphics maintain high resolution. Low-quality images can look pixelated, detracting from your presentation.

Proper use of charts and graphs can enhance understanding. Make sure they are not cluttered and use contrasting colors. This ensures that essential information stands out, even in black and white prints.

Formatting your slides consistently is crucial. Use a cohesive theme or template with uniform fonts and colors to give a professional look. Pick landscape orientation if printing full page slides to optimize space usage on standard paper.

Lastly, consider printing multiple slides per page if you aim to save paper. This option is perfect for handouts that don’t require large-scale visuals but maintain readability.

Ensuring Readability with Font and Object Scaling

Print readability starts with choosing the right font size and type. Stick to simple, sans-serif fonts like Arial or Calibri, which are easy on the eyes. We recommend a minimum font size of 12 points for printed notes pages for clarity.

Scale objects like text boxes and images appropriately. Overly large or small elements can make the content hard to read or overly cluttered.

Aligning elements consistently makes information flow logically, making it easier to follow. For instance, keeping notes under the respective slide thumbnails helps in retaining context.

Always preview before printing. Print speaker notes spaced evenly to avoid overlapping text and images. Proper alignment and scaling aid in presenting well-structured, legible material.

Finalizing Printing from Different Platforms

Printing PowerPoint slides with notes involves a few steps that vary depending on the platform you’re using. Whether you are using Windows, Mac, or opting for web and PDF formats, it’s crucial to follow specific steps to ensure a smooth printing process.

Printing from Windows and Mac Operating Systems

On Windows , open your PowerPoint presentation and hit Ctrl+P or navigate to File > Print . In the Print Layout options, choose Notes Page . This will print each slide with its corresponding notes underneath.

For Mac users in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac :

• Open your slide deck.
• Navigate to File > Print .
• Click Show Details .
• Select PowerPoint in the layout dropdown.
• Choose Notes .

In both Windows and Mac, you will see a preview of what the printed notes pages will look like. Adjust printer settings as needed and then click Print .

Utilizing Web and PDF Options for Sharing

For web-based solutions or when sharing your slides as PDFs, follow these steps. In PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 or any recent versions like PowerPoint 2021, 2019, 2016, or 2013 , go to File > Save As > PDF . Ensure that Options includes Notes pages .

If you prefer using a web-based tool such as Adobe Acrobat :

• Open your PowerPoint file.
• Go to File > Print .
• Select Show Details .
• Choose Notes under Print Layout.
• Save as PDF and open in a PDF viewer for previewing.

Sharing via web or PDF is convenient for collaboration or distributing presentations. This method preserves the formatting and ensures all notes are visible just like in the PowerPoint application.

Related posts:

• How to Record a PowerPoint Presentation: Step-by-Step Guide for Professionals
• How to Crop a Picture into a Circle in PowerPoint: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Copy a Slide from One PowerPoint to Another: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Print PowerPoint with Notes: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Insert PDF into PowerPoint: A Step-by-Step Guide for Seamless Integration
• How to Convert PowerPoint to PDF: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Create a Timeline in PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide for Professionals
• How to Change Slide Size in PowerPoint: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Save a PowerPoint as a Video for Smooth Presentations
• How to Apply a Template to an Existing PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Change Font on All Slides in PowerPoint: A Step-by-Step Guide
• How to Add Bullet Points in PowerPoint: Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Meta Quest 4
• Google Pixel 9
• Apple Vision Pro 2
• Nintendo Switch 2
• Samsung Galaxy Ring
• Yellowstone Season 6
• Recall an Email in Outlook
• Stranger Things Season 5

How to print a PowerPoint presentation with notes

One you know how to use PowerPoint , you can craft a great presentation. What's even better, however, is the option to use Presenter View. This lets you leave notes for yourself that can be viewed on your computer screen while everyone else is only seeing your presentation.

Print PowerPoint slides with notes on Windows

Print powerpoint slides with notes on mac, print powerpoint slides with notes on the web, what you need.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft account for PowerPoint on the web (optional)

However, if you're worried about a technical hiccup taking down your slide or don’t want to be glued to the computer, it's a good idea to add notes to your PowerPoint presentation and print it out. This lets you see both your slides and your presenter notes, giving you an analog way to carry on the presentation without the need for a monitor.

Interested in the feature? Here's how to print a PowerPoint presentation with notes on Windows, Mac, or directly from the web.

Printing your presentation in PowerPoint on Windows takes only a few steps. If you want notes with your slides, it’s a simple setting.

Step 1: Open PowerPoint to the presentation you want to print.

Step 2: Select the File tab.

• The most common Microsoft Teams problems and how to fix them
• How to create a drop-down list in Excel on Windows and Mac
• How to create a Powerpoint Presentation

Step 3: Choose Print and select your printer in the Printer drop-down if necessary.

Step 4: In the first drop-down box below Settings , pick which slides you want to print. You can print them all, the current slide, or a custom range.

Step 5: Click the next drop-down box for Print layout and select Notes page . You’ll see a preview on the right.

Step 6: Adjust any other settings you’d like before printing, such as switching Portrait orientation to Landscape orientation or Color to Grayscale .

Step 7: Click Print .

If you use Microsoft PowerPoint on Mac, you can print your slides with notes a just a few steps, like on Windows.

Step 1: Open PowerPoint on your Mac to the presentation you’d like to print.

Step 2: Click File > Print from the menu bar.

Step 3: In the pop-up window, choose your printer in the Printer drop-down box at the top if necessary.

Step 4: Choose which slides you’d like to print. You can print all slides, specific numbers, selected slides, or a custom range.

Step 5: Click the Layout drop-down box and choose Notes . You’ll see a preview on the left.

Step 6: Optionally, adjust any other settings you’d like such as Orientation , Output , or Scale .

Maybe you’re using PowerPoint on the web and prefer to print from there.

Step 1: Visit PowerPoint on the web , sign in, and open your presentation.

Step 3: Choose Print and pick Print notes pages .

Step 4: In the small pop-up window, select Open PDF to view your presentation file.

Step 5: Depending on your web browser, click the Print button or download the file to print on your computer.

There is much more that you can do with PowerPoint, such as embedding videos in presentations . Make sure you follow our PowerPoint best practices to compose presentations that really make an impact.

Editors’ Recommendations

• How to use Microsoft PowerPoint
• How to keep your Microsoft Teams status active
• How to password-protect an Excel file on Windows and Mac
• The best PowerPoint templates
• Best practices for making awesome PowerPoint slides
• How-To Guides

You can change the background to anything you like if you're using Powerpoint to create presentations: a picture, a color, a gradient, or even an in-motion video. You'll know the best background for your presentation, but whatever you want to change it to, we're here to help you do it.

Here's how to change the background in Powerpoint to a few different styles.

Slideshows are about more than just what you see. By adding audio like music, voiceover, or sound effects, you can use Microsoft PowerPoint to enhance your presentation or make it more useful to your audience.

You might include background music that evokes emotion, record your own voice to explain the slides, or add sound effects for that extra bit of flair. We’ll show you how to add audio to PowerPoint so that you can improve your next presentation.

If you're using Microsoft PowerPoint to create a slideshow, music might be the perfect addition. You may want a fun upbeat song on a slide or a soft subtle melody throughout the presentation.

We’ll show you how to add music to PowerPoint a few different ways and then use a single song on a slide or play background music from start to finish.

Home Blog PowerPoint Tutorials How to Print PowerPoint Slides with Notes

How to Print PowerPoint Slides with Notes

Before finalizing your presentation, you might be interested in printing and reviewing your slides and notes. In a previous post, we showed you how to add speaker notes in PowerPoint and export them to Word. This time, we will show you how to print speaker notes in PowerPoint.

How to Print PowerPoint with Notes on a PC

To print PowerPoint with speaker notes on Windows for your PowerPoint templates , go to File -> Print and select the slides you want to print from the first drop-down menu under Settings . This can include all slides, the current slide, or a custom slide range.

If you want to learn how to add speaker notes in PowerPoint , we recommend our guide with video tutorials and simple examples.

Print Slides and Notes

Once you get to the printer options, go to Settings, open the menu that says Full Page Slides and select Notes Pages .

Before printing your slides and notes, you can also choose to print them in Grayscale or Color (depending on your printer type and preferences). Other options in the Settings section will allow you to choose the slides, the slide numbers, the slide order (Collated or Uncollated) to print and the slide orientation (Portrait or Landscape).

You will get a print preview to see how your printed notes appear. Adjust any further settings from the Print menu, including selecting your required printer or adjusting the orientation to portrait or landscape, paper quality, or other printer properties, and click Print to print your notes with slide thumbnails.

How to Print PowerPoint with Notes on Mac

Printing notes in PowerPoint for Mac is similar to the PC version. To print PowerPoint notes on Mac, go to File -> Print and select the slides to print.

Select Notes from the Layout dropdown menu. 

You will see a print preview on the left. Adjust your printer settings according to need and click Print to print your slides and notes.

How to Print PowerPoint with Notes using PowerPoint for the Web

Printing PowerPoint with notes is slightly different when using PowerPoint for the web (also known as PowerPoint Online). If you have been wondering how to print notes in PPT using PowerPoint for the web, follow the steps below.

To print your notes, open your presentation with PowerPoint for the web and go to File -> Print . 

In the next step, select Print Notes Pages .

A pop-up will appear, asking you to open the file in PDF for printing. Click Open PDF to proceed further.

You can print slides with notes on PowerPoint for the web once the PDF file is loaded. Unlike PowerPoint for PC or Mac, PowerPoint for the web first converts your slides with notes to the Portable Document Format (PDF) before making them available for printing. Adjust your printer settings according to need and click Print to print your notes.

Printing Slides and Notes with Formatting

Sometimes, mere text isn’t enough. This is why one needs to add images and notes with custom formatting. You can do this by going to View (tab) –> Notes Master .

While you can add formatting to your notes via View (tab) –> Notes Page , however, to add ‘art’ (e.g. shapes or a company logo), you will require switching to Notes Master .

Once in the Notes Master , you can stylize your content, as well as add images, shapes, symbols, background styles, etc.

Once you have formatted your notes using Notes Page or Notes Master , go to File –> Print –> Settings  and select Notes Pages , followed by Print to print your slides with stylized speaker notes.

To print PowerPoint slides with notes on a Windows PC, go to File -> Print, then select the slides you want to print from the drop-down menu under Settings. Next, open the menu that says Full Page Slides and select Notes Pages. Adjust any further settings, such as orientation and printer properties, and click Print.

Yes, you can print PowerPoint slides with notes on a Mac. Go to File -> Print, select the slides to print, and choose Notes from the Layout dropdown menu. Adjust your printer settings as needed and click Print.

To print slides with notes using PowerPoint for the Web, open your presentation in PowerPoint for the Web, go to File -> Print, and select Print Notes Pages. A pop-up will appear, asking you to open the file in PDF for printing. Click Open PDF, adjust your printer settings, and then click Print.

Yes, you can print slides with notes and custom formatting. Go to View -> Notes Master to add images, shapes, symbols, background styles, etc. Once formatted, go to File -> Print, select Notes Pages under Settings, and click Print.

To ensure your content is properly formatted, add and stylize your content using the Notes Page or Notes Master options under the View tab. Then, go to File -> Print and select Notes Pages under Settings before printing.

In the Print menu, select the Settings section and choose the option to print in Grayscale before clicking Print. This can help save ink and make your printouts more economical.

Yes, you can print specific slides with notes. In the Print menu under Settings, select the specific slides or a custom range of slides you want to print before choosing Notes Pages and clicking Print.

Yes, the print preview will show how your notes appear. Before finalizing the print, you can adjust settings and see how your notes will look.

To add speaker notes in PowerPoint, type your notes in the Notes section at the bottom of the slide workspace. For more detailed instructions, refer to our guide with video tutorials and examples.

If your notes aren’t printing correctly, check your printer settings and ensure you have selected Notes Pages under the Print Layout options. Adjust the scale and layout settings or consult your printer’s manual for troubleshooting tips.

Final Words

By printing speaker notes, you can better assess your slide decks for preparing ahead for the presentation day. You can print PowerPoint slides with notes using the Print menu in PowerPoint. However, unlike PowerPoint for PC or PowerPoint for Mac, using PowerPoint for the web for printing notes requires exporting them to PDF format. However, the capability to print notes with slides is the same for the web version of PowerPoint.

For demonstrative purposes, we used the Creative 3D Box Diagram Template for PowerPoint for this post. If you want to download high-quality PowerPoint Templates with customizable slide objects, see our gallery for Premium PowerPoint Templates and refer to plans and pricing details for our catalogue of 7000+ PowerPoint Templates.

Like this article? Please share

Microsoft PowerPoint, PowerPoint Tips, Speaker Notes Filed under PowerPoint Tutorials

Related Articles

Filed under PowerPoint Tutorials • September 24th, 2024

Adding Voice Narration with PowerPoint Text to Speech

Want to turn text into speech in PowerPoint? Follow this step-by-step guide to integrate voiceovers into your presentations.

Filed under PowerPoint Tutorials • September 9th, 2024

How to Convert Illustrator to PowerPoint

Extract powerful graphics and integrate them into your presentation slides. Learn how to convert Illustrator to PowerPoint with this guide.

How to Convert InDesign to PowerPoint

Repurpose your indd files as presentations by learning how to convert InDesign to PowerPoint. Step-by-step guide for Windows and Mac users.

Leave a Reply

How to Print a PowerPoint Presentation With Notes

How many times have you walked away from a great presentation and wished you had the notes from the slide deck? Or are you a presenter that wants to provide slides and notes in a handout format for the audience or for you to uses as a reference while speaking?

Printing a PowerPoint presentation with notes attached can be a valuable tool for presenters at all levels. You can physically print and distribute presentations with notes or “print” them to a PDF for easy digital sharing.

Here’s how you do it.

How Does Unlimited PowerPoint Templates Sound?

Download thousands of PowerPoint templates, and many other design elements, with an Envato membership. It starts at $16 per month, and gives you unlimited access to a growing library of over 19+ million presentation templates, fonts, photos, graphics, and more.

Ciri Template

Maximus Template

Explore PowerPoint Templates

Create Notes in Your PowerPoint

The first step toward printing notes from a PowerPoint presentation is to include notes in the proper location.

Open your file and click the Notes button in the bottom toolbar to show the notes field if it is not open. Then just type your notes in the area provided. Click and drag the line above the notes area to expand or collapse the amount of space available.

If you plan to print notes and hand them out, take care with the information you type in. Make sure to use proper spelling, grammar, and citations. Don’t put anything in the notes that should not be public information.

You can use formatting in the notes area, just like any other part of the slide. This includes bulleted and numbered lists or formatting such as bold or italics.

Save your presentation before printing.

Print the Presentation with Notes

There are two view options for printing PowerPoint presentations with notes:

• Full page, with one slide and preprinted notes per page
• Thumbnail view, with a place to write notes (this does not include your presentation notes)

Once you know what format you want to use and your presentation is ready, go to the File tab and click Print.

To print a PowerPoint presentation with your speaker notes, change the layout to Notes. This option prints one slide per page with notes below it. Set other options, such as number of copies and select color or black and white printing. Then click Print.

To print a PowerPoint presentation with room to write notes, change the layout to Handouts. You can select 2, 3, 4, 6, or 9 slides per page. The 3-slides-per-page format is most commonly used because it presents slides that are large enough to see with a lined space for note-taking. Then click Print.

Print PowerPoint Notes Only

You can change the way notes print and remove the default print setting which includes the slide above notes, in the View menu.

Navigate to view and click Notes Page. You can then delete the slide image or make any other design adjustments you want. You have to do this for each slide. If you want to change the notes design for all slides, make changes in the Notes Master. Then save and follow print using the Notes layout.

”Print” PowerPoint Presentation to PDF

Rather than printing a PowerPoint on paper, you can “print” or save the notes as a PDF.

Go to the File tab and click Print. Choose your layout (Notes or Handouts). Select Save as PDF.

That’s it. Now you have all the tools you need to print a PowerPoint presentation with notes.

Don’t forget to take a look at our full PowerPoint templates guide , or our collection of the best PowerPoint templates for your next project!

How to Print a PowerPoint Presentation with Notes

Print PowerPoint Presentations with Speaker Notes

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated May 30, 2022

Applies to: Microsoft ®  PowerPoint ® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 365 (Windows)

You can print PowerPoint presentations with notes with or without slide thumbnails. You can control the way notes or speaker notes are printed in three ways – by editing the Notes Master which affects all slides, by editing single notes pages in Notes Page view or by changing formatting in the Notes pane in Normal View.

In Notes Master View, you can control the position and formatting of all notes pages and add or edit headers, footers, dates, page numbers and even company logos. In Notes Page View, you can control the position and formatting of single notes pages and you can also add other objects such as shapes, pictures, tables, charts and SmartArt. You can't draw shapes or insert pictures in the Notes pane in Normal View but you can draw shapes or add pictures in Notes Page View. Pictures and other objects that you add in Notes Page View appear on printed notes pages but not in Normal View.

Recommended article: How to Export PowerPoint Speaker Notes to Microsoft Word

Do you want to learn more about PowerPoint? Check out our virtual classroom or in-person PowerPoint courses >

Formatting changes made in different views in PowerPoint will appear in the preview area when you click the File tab in the Ribbon, select Print and then choose the option to print Notes Pages.

To move between different views, use the View tab in the Ribbon as shown below:

Print a PowerPoint presentation with notes and slide thumbnails

To print a PowerPoint presentation with notes and slide thumbnails (one per page):

• Click the File tab in the Ribbon and then click Print.
• Under Settings, click the arrow next to Full Page Slides and then in the Print Layout area, click Notes Pages. The preview on the right will display the current notes page. If you've inserted headers, footers, page numbers and a company logo, they will display in the preview. Formatting and any objects you've added in Notes Page view will also appear.
• To specify the page orientation, click the arrow next to Portrait Orientation and then click Portrait Orientation or Landscape Orientation.
• If you want to print your notes and slide thumbnails in color, select a color printer, click the arrow next to Color and then click Color.
• Select any other options you'd like in the Settings area.
• Click Print.

Below are the PowerPoint Print settings:

Print a PowerPoint presentation with notes but without slide thumbnails (notes only)

If you want to print the presentation without the default slide thumbnails, you will need to delete the thumbnail for each slide in its Notes Page. Before proceeding, you may want to make a copy of your presentation and work in the copy.

To print a PowerPoint presentation with notes but without slide thumbnails:

• In Normal View, display the slide with the thumbnail you want to delete.
• Click the View tab in the Ribbon and in the Presentation Views group, click Notes Page.
• To delete the slide thumbnail on the notes page, click the slide thumbnail and then press Delete.
• Repeat for each slide.

Resize the notes area of a single notes page

A default notes page consists of a slide thumbnail on the top half of the page and a section of the same size for notes on the bottom of the page. If you'd like to increase the space for your notes, you can resize these areas.

To increase the space for notes for a single notes page:

• In Normal View, display the slide to which you want to increase the space for notes.
• If you want to increase or decrease the size of the slide thumbnail or notes placeholder on the notes page, drag a sizing handle on the slide thumbnail or notes placeholder in the same way that you would resize other PowerPoint objects. Use a corner handle when resizing the slide thumbnail so you do not distort it. You do not need to use a corner sizing handle for the notes placeholder.
• If you need to move the slide thumbnail or notes placeholder, click the border (not a handle) of the thumbnail or placeholder and drag or press the arrow keys on your keyboard.
• If you want to delete the slide thumbnail on the notes page, click the slide thumbnail and then press Delete.

Below is a default notes page in Notes Page View:

Add objects on a single notes page

You can add objects on a single notes page (which will print but will not appear in Normal View).

To add an object on a single notes page:

• Click the Insert tab in the Ribbon and add the desired shape, picture, table, chart or SmartArt.
• Resize and format the object as necessary.
• Move the object to the desired location.

Resize the notes area of all notes pages

You can also resize the notes area of all notes page using the Notes Master:

• Click the View tab in the Ribbon and in the Master Views group, click Notes Master.

Do not delete the slide thumbnail in the Notes Master View as it has no effect and will still preview.

Below is the default notes page in Notes Master View:

Change font size for all notes pages

You can change font size in the Notes Pages View or in the Notes pane in Normal View. However, to change the font size for the notes for all notes pages:

• Select the desired level in the notes outline and change the font size. You can change the font size using the font size menu in the Home tab in the Ribbon or by right-clicking and selecting a font size in the mini toolbar that appears.

It's best to change the font by changing the font theme through the Design tab in the Ribbon (this is hidden in the Variants drop-down gallery in 2013 and later versions of PowerPoint). If you change the font theme, this will affect the entire presentation (both slides and notes) and is best set when you first create your presentation. Otherwise, users may manually apply fonts on each slide which would override the theme.

Print a logo on all notes pages

To add an object such as a logo to all the notes pages in your presentation (and print it), you will need to edit the Notes Master:

• Click the Insert tab in the Ribbon and click Picture(s).
• Navigate to the folder with the picture / logo you want to insert and double-click it.
• Resize the picture by dragging its handles.
• Position the picture by dragging it (usually by its middle area).

It's best not to delete placeholders (such as header and footer) to accommodate the logo. Instead, move the placeholders to an alternate location.

Print headers and footers on all notes pages

As long as placeholders appear in the Notes Master, you can insert slide numbers, a date and text using the Header & Footer command.

To print headers and footers on all notes pages (assuming you want to print notes only):

• Click the View tab in the Ribbon and click Notes Master in the Master Views group. Note the placeholders in this view. If necessary, move the placeholders to alternate locations by dragging their borders. It's best not to delete header, footer, date or page number placeholders.
• Click the Insert tab in the Ribbon and click Header & Footer in the Text group. A dialog box appears.
• If necessary, click the Notes and Handouts tab in the dialog box.
• Ensure the check box for Page number is checked. You can also check Header, Footer and Date if required. If you check Header and / or Footer, enter text you want to appear in the header or footer text boxes. This could include your company name, your name, your contact information and / or the name of the presentation.
• Click Apply to All.

Below is the Header & Footer dialog box:

You can also print PowerPoint speaker notes in a Microsoft Word document. If you'd like to explore this option, check out the article How to Export PowerPoint Speaker Notes to Microsoft Word .

Subscribe to get more articles like this one

Did you find this article helpful? If you would like to receive new articles, join our email list.

More resources

How to Add and Format Notes in PowerPoint

How to Export PowerPoint Speaker Notes to Microsoft Word

How to Hide and Unhide Slides in PowerPoint (with Shortcuts)

How to Quickly Remove All Speaker Notes in PowerPoint (PC or Mac)

3 Ways to Change the Font on All Slides in a PowerPoint Presentation

Related courses

Microsoft PowerPoint: Intermediate / Advanced

Microsoft PowerPoint: Design for Non-Designers

Microsoft PowerPoint: Animations Bootcamp

Microsoft Excel: Intermediate / Advanced

VIEW MORE COURSES >

Our instructor-led courses are delivered in virtual classroom format or at our downtown Toronto location at 18 King Street East, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (some in-person classroom courses may also be delivered at an alternate downtown Toronto location). Contact us at [email protected] if you'd like to arrange custom instructor-led virtual classroom or onsite training on a date that's convenient for you.

Copyright 2024 Avantix ® Learning

You may also like

How to Insert or Type E with an Accent Mark in PowerPoint (È, É, Ê, Ë, è, é, ê, or ë)

You can insert or type e with an accent mark in PowerPoint using built-in tools or keyboard shortcuts (including Alt code shortcuts). The letter e can be inserted with an accent in both upper or lower case in text boxes or placeholders on slides, the slide master or layouts. The following are common accents in upper or lower case – È, É, Ê, Ë, è, é, ê, or ë.

How to Fade a Picture or Part of a Picture in PowerPoint (Using a Gradient)

You can fade a picture in PowerPoint by drawing a rectangle shape on top of the picture and then filling the rectangle with a gradient from opaque to transparent. This technique is often used to fade an image into the background of a slide. Since the rectangle is placed on top of the image and then text may be placed on top of the rectangle, you may need to reorder the objects.

How to Lock an Image, Shape or Other Object in PowerPoint

You can now lock an image, shape or other object in PowerPoint. Objects can be locked in Normal View or Slide Master View. Only PowerPoint 365 users can lock objects to prevent moving and resizing. This is helpful if you want to select and move other objects on the slide or prevent others from moving or resizing an object. You can lock items using the context menu or the Selection Pane.

MORE POWERPOINT ARTICLES >

Microsoft, the Microsoft logo, Microsoft Office and related Microsoft applications and logos are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in Canada, US and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of the registered owners.

Avantix Learning |18 King Street East, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5C 1C4 | Contact us at [email protected]

Our Courses

Avantix Learning courses are offered online in virtual classroom format or as in-person classroom training. Our hands-on, instructor-led courses are available both as public scheduled courses or on demand as a custom training solution.

All Avantix Learning courses include a comprehensive course manual including tips, tricks and shortcuts as well as sample and exercise files.

VIEW COURSES  >

Contact us at  [email protected]  for more information about any of our courses or to arrange custom training.

Privacy Overview

Pin it on pinterest.

• Print Friendly

3 Easy Ways To Print Your PowerPoint Presentation Notes

• By Illiya Vjestica
• - February 13, 2020

Here are three simple ways to print your PowerPoint presentation notes. Let’s begin.

We’re often taught that you should never turn your back to an audience when presenting, and that is why using presentation notes can be important for the audience. Reading straight off your slides is also considered a big no-no. But what if there was a way to keep track of your talk without glancing over at your presentation for a quick reminder of what comes next?

Thankfully there is.

Adding presentation notes to your PowerPoint slides is a great solution. It allows you to keep the vital information on the screen – ensuring your slides aren’t stuffed full of text – while the more in-depth information is available off-screen for you to follow.

Having your notes in this format can help you to deliver a more streamlined, in-depth and impactful presentation – particularly if you have them printed off and to hand. This way they’ll serve as a sort of script that you can follow to ensure that all the key information from your talk is shared effectively while acting as a useful way for you to communicate ideas that might not feature on your slides.

You can also share them with your audience if necessary in the form of a brochure or handout, which is a big plus when it comes to increasing retention rates. This is especially beneficial for more technical presentations or for those which require your audience to remember a lot of information.

Let’s take a look at how to print off your PowerPoint presentation with notes.

1. How to print your PowerPoint with Notes

Let’s start with the simplest option, shall we? If you choose to print your PowerPoint notes in the standard manner, you’ll end up with pages of notes accompanied by the thumbnails of the slides they correspond to, helping you to deliver your speech clearly and easily.

There are some things to bear in mind, though. If you have lots of notes for a particular slide that cover several pages, for instance, the slide thumbnail they correspond to will only appear on the first page. Make sure you’re organised, then, and try to keep your notes as concise as possible to avoid getting lost.

That being said – if short and snappy notes aren’t possible for your talk – there is a little trick you can use. Check out the page number at the bottom of each page. These actually match up to the slide number in your presentation – not the number of pages you are printing – so serve as a useful reference point to help you keep track of where you are.

Here’s how to print out your PowerPoint presentation notes as standard:

• Either go to File > Print to open up your PowerPoint print options, or press CTRL + P
• Go to Settings > Print Layout
• Select the Notes Page Print Layout and click Print

2. How to create PowerPoint notes and print them with Notes Master

Notes Master helps you to customise your presentation even more, and you may find it to be a simpler option when it comes to creating notes that are in-line with your slides. Here are some quick instructions on how to use the tool and to print your PowerPoint presentation notes out afterwards:

1. Select ‘Normal View’ for your PowerPoint

2. Select the ‘View tab’, then select ‘Notes Master’

3. Format the ‘Notes Master’ as you would a PowerPoint slide – this will be self-explanatory

4. Close the ‘Master View’ when you are finished editing the ‘Notes Master’

4. Click ‘Print’ to take you to the ‘Print Options’ page

5. Click ‘Settings’, then open the ‘Print Layout’ options

6. Select the ‘Notes Page’ Print Layout and ‘Print’

3. How to print PowerPoint presentation notes as a customised handout

It’s entirely possible to print your PowerPoint presentation notes as a handout for your audience with accompanying thumbnail image of each slide. Your audience can have all your notes with handy slide numbers so they know where they are in the presentation. Here’s how you can pull this off:

1. Select ‘File Menu’ from the PowerPoint menu

2. Select ‘Export’

3. Click ‘Create Handouts’

4. Click Notes next to slide (this will push all your PowerPoint presentation notes into Microsoft Word)

5. Click Select ‘Table Design’ from the Word menu

6. Select the Design tab from the Word menu

7. Customise the handout design to your own liking and feel, changing the colours and typography.

8. Go to ‘File’ then ‘Print Options’ select ‘Print’ you can choose whether you would like your notes either ‘Landscape’ or Portrait’

Microsoft have also put together further instructions if you want to style and customise your presentation handouts in PowerPoint.

A noteworthy presentation

So there you have it. In our opinion, these are the best ways to print out your PowerPoint presentation notes for a clear, effective and engaging talk.

If you need any help with planning your presentations in the future or want to find out more about what we can do, contact us here .

Create stunning presentations with our templates, toolkits and guides.

Illiya Vjestica

Share this post:, related posts.

Make Your Slides Intriguing Like Author Sam Horn

7 Surprising Benefits of Using Google Slides

2 thoughts on “3 easy ways to print your powerpoint presentation notes”.

Pingback: How Do I Print A Presentation? The 16 New Answer - Chiangmaiplaces.net

Unfortunately the export to Word function doesn’t appear to work on the MAC version of PowerPoint which is a shame as you can export as a pdf or rich text, but not MS Word. Unless there is another way?

Leave a Comment Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to visit this site, you agree to our use of cookies

• Troubleshooting Guides
• Common Errors
• Tech Tutorials
• Apps & Programs
• About our team & mission

How to Print PPT With Notes in PowerPoint: 3 Tested Methods

Read below to learn 3 quick ways of printing PPT with notes

published on January 11, 2024

Share this article

Improve this guide

Read our disclosure page to find out how can you help Windows Report sustain the editorial team Read more

• To print PPT with notes, go to File > Print and select Notes Pages from the Full Page Slides option.
• Read below to find the complete step-by-step instructions for PowerPoint and PowerPoint Online.

Many of our readers want to know how to print a PPT with notes from the speaker to help them better understand the presentation.

Can I print a PowerPoint presentation with notes? Yes, you can print the PowerPoint slides together with notes at the bottom of the page. Read the tested methods below.

How do I print PPT with notes in PowerPoint?

1. use the print option.

• Open the PPT presentation in PowerPoint.

• If you also want to exclude or print comments, just check or uncheck the Print Comments option from the Notes Pages section. Just so you know, if you choose to print the comments, they will appear on the next print, after the slide and notes page.

Unfortunately, in this mode, there is no way to partition the slide and notes more efficiently. Even if you choose the Landscape mode instead of Portrait, you will still lose a lot from the page.

However, you can enter the numbers of the slides that have keynotes and print the others normally.

If PowerPoint 365 is not opening on Windows 11 , the highlighted guide will help you fix the problem.

2. Save the PPT with notes as PDF and then print it

• Open your presentation in PowerPoint.

• Now, if you open the resulting PDF, you will have all the notes right below the slide and ready to print as a PDF document.

If you don’t have the desktop app, here’s our guide on how to download PowerPoint 2019 on Windows 10 & 11 .

• 30 Excel Basic Formulas You Must Know
• Microsoft Makecode Arcade: Everything You Need to Know about This Free Online Code Editor
• New Line in Cell in Excel: How to Start a New Row
• Windows 11 Hotspot CMD: How To Set It Up Step-by-Step
• Microsoft Excel Keyboard Shortcuts: The Must Know List

3. Print PPT with notes from PowerPoint online

• Log into your Microsoft 365 account, select PowerPoint online, and open the PPT you want to print with notes.

Printing the PPT with notes in PowerPoint Online can be the easiest way, but only if you upload the presentation to your OneDrive account. Otherwise, you will need an extra step to upload it from your device.

The solution works the same from any browser or mobile app, and you’re good to go whether you’re using Windows 10 or 11.

If you want more tips, here’s how to add a timer to your presentation and follow the schedule.

Did you know that you can record a PowerPoint presentation ? It might be even better than printing the PPT with notes.

So, now you know how to print a PPT with notes and even include comments if you need them.

For any other questions or ideas, let us know about them in the comments section below.

More about the topics: Powerpoint guides

Windows Toubleshooting Expert

Oldtimer in the tech and science press, Claudiu is focused on whatever comes new from Microsoft. His abrupt interest in computers started when he saw the first Home Computer as a kid. However, his passion for Windows and everything related became obvious when he became a sys admin in a computer science high school. With 14 years of experience in writing about everything there is to know about science and technology, Claudiu also likes rock music, chilling in the garden, and Star Wars. May the force be with you, always!

Sort by: Latest Oldest Most Votes

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Commenting as . Not you?

Save information for future comments

Was this page helpful?

Let us know if you managed to solve your tech problem reading this article.

We’re happy to hear that!

You can subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with the latest news and best deals!

Do you have a suggestion?

We know how frustrating could be to look for an universal solution.

If you have an error which is not present in the article, or if you know a better solution , please help us to improve this guide.

Home » Microsoft Powerpoint » How to Print PowerPoint with Notes

How to Print PowerPoint with Notes

You have a PowerPoint presentation where you have introduced notes in individual slides. The notes helped you to remember important aspects of your presentation. But they were not visible to the audience.

Now, you want to present your audience with a printed version of your presentation. You want to print the notes along with their respective slides to make it easier for them to understand.

You can do this easily in PowerPoint, and we explain the method here.

Step by Step guide to print Powerpoint with Notes

Step #1: open the presentation.

Open the PowerPoint presentation, and click on Notes at the bottom of the screen to display the notes.

Step #2: Open the Print Menu

Click on the File tab in the top menu bar to open the File menu.

In the File menu, click on the Print tab in the left pane to open the Print menu in the right pane. PowerPoint also shows a preview of the slide in the right pane.

Step #3: Select your printer

Under the Printer section in the right pane, click on the tiny triangle on the right side. Select the printer that you would like to use.

Step #4: Select to print notes

Under Settings, click on Full Page Slides.

This opens the Print Layout menu.

Under the Handouts section, you can select the type of prints you want. Under the Print Layout section, click on Notes Pages.

The preview pane in the right pane changes to show the notes under the slide.

Step #5: Print the slide and notes

Under Settings section, click on Print All Slides.

This opens a menu, and you can choose to: 

• Print all slides
• Print your selection of slides
• Print only the current slide in the preview pane
• Print a custom range of slides

Make your choice and click on the Print icon at the top under the Print section.

PowerPoint prints the slides as per your choice along with their notes.

Step #6: Close the presentation

Click on Close in the left pane to close the presentation.

So this is how you can easily print your notes as handouts along with prints of your presentation.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

How to Add Speaker Notes in PowerPoint (Tutorial)

Speaker notes in PowerPoint can be a lifesaver for presenters who need a quick reference during their talk. Instead of struggling to remember key points or losing your place during a presentation, you can have your notes right in front of you.

Whether you're a seasoned presenter or new to public speaking, this tutorial will help you feel more confident and prepared for your next presentation. With insights and practical tips from our in-house presentation designers , you'll have all the tools you need for success.

Let's dive in and explore how to add speaker notes in PowerPoint, taking your presentations to the next level!

In this tutorial, we’ll cover the following topics :

• Starting with the basics: How to add speaker notes in PowerPoint
• Ready to Captivate Your Audience? Let’s see how to view speaker notes while presenting
• From PCs to Macs, learn how to print speaker notes in PowerPoint
• Get answers to your FAQs and unlock tips for better presentations

Let’s start with the basics - or feel free to skip to your preferred section using the list above.

Adding speaker notes in PowerPoint

Adding notes to PPT is a reasonably straightforward process, regardless of your operating system. Here's how to add notes in PowerPoint:

• Select a slide you want to add notes to.
• View the Notes pane located beneath each slide. If it's not visible, you can make it appear by clicking Notes on the bottom taskbar.
• You will see a blank space with the prompt "Click to add notes." That's where you can enter your speaker notes.

Pro tip: Add Notes Via Notes Page view

Are you looking to give an impeccably organized presentation? Feronika Wulandari , design manager from 24 Slides, has a pro tip for you!

"For presentations that will be copied or distributed to the audience as a reference later, it is crucial to provide detailed speaker notes. Merely looking at our presentation slides may leave the audience struggling to grasp the context.”

If you're aiming for an impeccably organized and informative presentation, Feronika's advice is invaluable. Take your presentations to the next level by utilizing the powerful Notes Page view in PowerPoint . This feature allows you to incorporate comprehensive speaker notes into your slides, ensuring your audience can fully grasp the context after the presentation.

In the Notes Page view, you have complete control over the content of your speaker notes. Customize the font size, and enrich the notes with images, shapes, charts, and more. You can even tailor the background color to suit your preferences or corporate branding. As Feronika says:

“In the notes view, we can include ample text to facilitate the audience's understanding of the presentation's context. It also is an excellent tool for attaching references and citations, particularly for content-heavy presentations like scientific ones.”

Ready to try it out? Here's how you access the Notes Page view:

• Click View .
• Look for the Presentation Views section .
• Select Notes Page .

If you want even more control over how you want your notes to look, you can check out the Notes Master . This is how you can try it out:

• Look for the Master Views section .
• Select Notes Master.

Here you can choose the design and layout of the notes page and select options for your page setup. This is what the Notes Master looks like:

Now that you know how to add notes to PowerPoint, let's see how to present PowerPoint with notes.

Ready for your next presentation? Check out how to see speaker notes while presenting

To prepare for your next presentation, follow these steps so you can have your notes on hand without your audience being able to see them. First, click on the Slide Show tab , and select the box Use Presenter View . This is what the Presenter View in PPT looks like:

To access the presenter view, start your slideshow and then click on the left button of your mouse. From the options that appear, select Show Presenter View .

And last, learn how to print notes in PowerPoint

Printing PowerPoint presenter notes can be done in different ways, depending on your operating system. Let's look at each one of them.

How to print Speaker Notes (PowerPoint - Windows)

• Click File in the top left corner.
• Choose Notes Pages from the Settings dropdown menu.
• Adjust any other printer settings.
• Click Print .

How to print Speaker Notes (PowerPoint - macOS)

• Click File .

3. Click Show Details .

4. Select Notes from the Layout dropdown menu.

5. Adjust any other printer settings.

6. Click Print .

You may also want to know: How to print notes without slides?

If you want to print speaker notes only, this is what you should do:

• Go to the View tab and click Notes Page . On each page, you’ll see a thumbnail of the slide and the notes it has.

2. Select the thumbnail on each page and press delete . Repeat this step for each notes page.

3. Finally, go to the File tab and click Print. Now, repeat the note-printing process shown in the section above.

How to print PowerPoint slides with notes: Multiple per page

If you want to print multiple slides on the same page, including the notes, follow these steps: 1. Open the File menu, select Export , and click on Create Handouts.

2. Select Notes next to slides , and click OK.

This will begin the export to Word, where you can finish printing your slides and notes as a document.

Customer Frequently Asked Questions

What are speaker notes in powerpoint.

Speaker notes on PowerPoint presentations are a feature that allows presenters to add additional information that won't appear in the presentation slides.

PowerPoint notes can be used to provide additional context and details about the content on the slide, such as statistics or critical messages. They can also help emphasize specific points without cluttering their slides with too much information. They are a valuable tool for presenters to keep essential points at hand while giving a presentation.

These are some examples of speaker notes in PowerPoint:

Benefits of using speaker notes in PowerPoint

Why add speaker notes to PowerPoint? Learning how to use notes can be a game-changer , it can benefit you in many ways.

Speaker notes on PowerPoint can help you recall important points and key messages as you give a presentation. They also provide a security blanket, giving you the confidence to deliver your speech without worrying about forgetting something.

Remember, not worrying about memorization can help you prioritize inflection and tone and make you look more professional and connected with your audience.

How do I edit slide Notes?

A good thing to remember is that you can edit your speaker notes anytime you want. So, if there is a last-minute change or a new detail you would like to consider, you can follow these steps:

• Select the slide where you want to edit notes.

You will be able to see the Notes written in the Notes Pane . Click inside it so you can edit de content. Click outside the Notes Pane to save your changes.

What is the use of Notes Page view?

The Notes Page view is a PowerPoint feature that can help you upgrade your note-taking experience . Rather than presenting your notes in a simple text format, this feature presents them as individual pages with diverse layouts, colors, and formatting options for you to explore and customize.

If you would like to check out this feature, check out our Notes Page View section .

What is the advantage of the Notes Page view?

So, why is this feature impressive? Well, the Notes Page view offers several advantages that simplify the management of your notes:

• Organization: When it comes to giving presentations, being organized is essential. You can't afford to waste time deciphering your notes. With the Notes Page view, you effortlessly organize them into distinct pages, sections, or categories, allowing you to find what you need quickly.
• Personalization: The Notes Page view also puts you in complete control. It lets you customize the appearance and layout of your notes according to your preferences. You can explore a wide array of templates, themes, and styles, making your note-taking experience unique.

What is the difference between Slide Sorter view and Notes Page view?

The Slide Sorter view and Notes Page view are two different viewing options in PowerPoint .

The Slide Sorter view in PowerPoint provides a condensed and sequential display of all the slides in your presentation. It presents miniature versions of each slide in a grid layout, allowing you to manage the order and structure of your presentation easily.

This view is beneficial when you need to reorganize your content or gain a quick understanding of your entire presentation at a glance.

On the other hand, the Notes Page view allows you to see your slides along with any accompanying speaker notes . It is ideal for creating and reviewing speaker notes, providing a dedicated area to jot down the additional information you want to reference during your presentation.

You can customize and format your notes as needed, making them a valuable resource for guiding your delivery or providing more in-depth explanations.

Get outstanding presentations that make you stand out from the crowd!

If you want to improve your presentation skills and give a more professional image to your business, this tutorial can help. However, the design for your presentation is crucial, and that's where our presentation design solutions come in.

At 24Slides , we transform presentations from "good" to "extraordinary," saving you time and effort. Say goodbye to long working hours on PowerPoint and let our design experts amaze you overnight!

You might also like these articles:

• How to Add a Timer to Your Powerpoint Presentations
• How to Make a PowerPoint Slideshow that Runs Automatically
• How to Create Your Perfect Webinar Presentation (+Examples)
• Master Slides 101: How to Create and Use Master Slides in PowerPoint
• How to Track Changes in PowerPoint

Create professional presentations online

Other people also read

Tutorial: Save your PowerPoint as a Video

How To Convert Google Slides To PowerPoint and Vice Versa

How To Add Animations To PowerPoint

How to print PowerPoint with notes

• Written by: Richard Goring
• Categories: PowerPoint design , PowerPoint productivity
• Comments: 2

What’s the weirdest thing people do in PowerPoint? Yes, the answer could be to make Christmas cards , or even worse, Valentine’s Day cards , but in general it’s printing the slides .  At BrightCarbon we promote the use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool, where visual slides support a presenter and use graphics, diagrams, and animations to explain the key points. These types of slides often don’t print well because of layers and animations, and they certainly aren’t self-explanatory. But sometimes you do need to print PowerPoint slides, or print PowerPoint slides with notes, or even print multiple slides on one page . So, if do you need to do that, how do you do it?

The best, and possibly easiest, thing to do is not print your slides, but print the Notes Pages in PowerPoint. Notes Page is a special view that shows the slide and the speaker notes on the same page. This allows you to have a more visual slide to explain the point when presenting, and then a detailed set of notes for your audience to use as reference material.

• Go to the File tab in the top left of the ribbon (or use Ctrl + P )
• Choose Print from the menu
• Under Settings , click the Print Layout drop-down (which says Full Page Slides by default) and select Notes Pages .

The nice thing about using the Notes Page to print PowerPoint with notes is that there is a separate, dedicated view for it, so you don’t have to compromise on the design of your main slide, but it’s all contained in a single file.

Go to the View tab on the ribbon, then select Notes Page on the left to see the standard layout with a slide at the top and speaker notes underneath.

You can simply print it as is, but of course there’s so much more that you can do to print PowerPoint with notes that look good and give off a sense of professionalism. Watch this video tutorial or scroll down for step-by-step instructions and even more detail.

How to create a PowerPoint notes master

How to add notes in powerpoint, how to reset a powerpoint notes page, problems with powerpoint notes pages, how to print notes in powerpoint or save as pdf, changing default print settings.

Print PowerPoint notes in grayscale or black and white

How to export PowerPoint speaker notes to Word

If you want to alter the layout of the PowerPoint Notes Page, you can do so in the Notes Master (to the right of the Notes Page button on the ribbon). Here you can update the formatting of all the Notes Pages in your deck which includes backgrounds, arrangement of the placeholder content elements (header, slide image, footer, date, body text, and page number), adding a grid using guides, and even adding custom elements, such as extra graphics, logos, and other non-placeholder content. You can even set a different brand style to your presentation with a new color and font theme. In fact, you’ll have to copy these over from your main presentation if you want to keep things consistent. You can also change the Notes Page orientation from portrait to landscape.

This means that, when you print notes in PowerPoint, you can create a completely custom and beautifully designed Notes Page to act as a dedicated handout, rather than the usual tedious affair of a slide thumbnail thrown on the slide with a load of notes haphazardly arranged underneath.

What you can’t do in the Notes Page view, which seems foolish, is change the page size. You may be tempted by the Slide Size button on the left of the Notes Master tab, but that changes the size of your presentation slides, so don’t use it! It will affect your whole presentation, mess up content and, if you’ve not removed the variants from your slide master (by saving as a .potx template file), then it will also alter the colors and fonts too. The paper size is set by your default printer settings. To change it, you have to change the print settings, which are in File > Print > Printer > Printer Properties . Remember to choose the printer from the drop-down menu too, as each printer in the list has different settings. I suspect the reason you have to navigate this path to Mordor to change the paper size is that no one expects you to do it, but at least now you know you can.

Occasionally things go wonky and the PowerPoint notes pages change size or are all different sizes. It’s an obscure bug, but can happen if you open the file in PowerPoint for the web. Fortunately, the excellent Steve Rindsberg has a quick solution to fix Notes Page size problems .

Back to the notes pages themselves, as well as changing the Notes Master, you can also go to the Notes Page in the View tab and add notes in PowerPoint by personalizing each individual page. This won’t impact your presented slides, but it allows you to create something perfect for printed handouts.

The standard layout for the PowerPoint Notes Page uses the Notes Master. You can alter any of the text in the main notes placeholder to add notes in PowerPoint, which will also transfer through to the speaker notes of your slides. You can alter the formatting of the notes so that they look better or are easier to read, but only basic formatting like bold, italics, and underline, plus bulleted and numbered lists will transfer to the slide speaker notes in PowerPoint. You can also alter the color, size, and font of text, and things like the margins, line spacing, and paragraph spacing, but this won’t transfer to the slide speaker notes. It’s worth noting that any changes in formatting you make to the slide speaker notes – like changing the color or font – will be reflected in the Notes Page, even though you can’t see these changes in the speaker notes view.

You can take it further by deviating from the standard PowerPoint notes template. For example, it may be that you have a key messages slide, or an agenda, contacts, or data slide, where there isn’t anything of value to be added with the speaker notes, and it’s better to see the slide as large as possible on the page when printed. Well, this is your opportunity. You can alter the size and position of any of the six placeholder element types. It’s easy to make the slide fill the page and remove the notes completely. You can also add additional custom elements onto each notes page. This might include additional information, data tables, highlights, ink annotations, or punchlines for key points. You’re essentially created a dedicated, custom notes page to print PowerPoint with notes, without affecting the presentation slides at all.

However, only content in the body placeholder of the notes page will appear in the speaker notes (and likewise anything in the speaker notes will appear in the notes page body placeholder). Custom formatted notes content like you can see in this example, with separate text boxes or visual representations of data, won’t appear in the speaker notes. One workaround is to put the body placeholder off the edge of the page. This means it won’t be seen when you print PowerPoint with notes or save handouts as a PDF, but all the content is still there in your speaker notes. With all this customization you’re essentially creating a second document, so be wary of the time requirement. On the upside, it’s all in one file and there are no version control issues.

If you have a lot of notes for a single slide, you may be frustrated that they extend beyond the body text placeholder into your carefully selected margins or go off the edge of the page entirely. You can use the text formatting options to shrink text to the size of the text box ( Right-click > Format Shape > Text Options > Text Box > Shrink text on overflow ). On any individual text boxes where the text spills out beyond the placeholder, you’ll get a small AutoCorrect control appearing at the bottom left of the placeholder, allowing you to choose to AutoFit Text to Placeholder for that particular page. However, if you miss this, all is not lost, as PowerPoint, rather ingeniously, will recognize that you have text outside of the text placeholder, and when you print the notes pages, it will put that overflow text onto a second page, starting at the top with no slide thumbnail, but in line with your standard text box placeholder. Usefully (probably) it numbers both pages the same, so you won’t get additional page numbers from the extra overflow pages. That means you don’t have to force your audience to read tiny text just because you have a lot of it.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t change the presentation slide itself in the Notes Page view, and also that any changes you make to the slides will impact the thumbnail image of the slide that’s in the notes page. So you can’t have a layered slide for presenting and a flat slide for printed notes all on the same slide, unfortunately (unless you go to a lot of effort to create a flat summary version as a top layer that disappears instantly and so isn’t seen during the presentation).

If you alter a notes page and then decide you want to reset it to the original layout, you need to use the Reapply Master function. As far as I can tell, the only way to do this is on a blank area of the notes page right-click , choose Notes Layout , then Reapply Master from the pop-up menu. This will reset the notes page to the default in the notes master. That includes resetting the position of moved objects, restoring deleted elements, and removing any custom formatting from the text.

If you want to do this to every notes page in the deck, we’ve got a quick fix to reapply master to ALL PowerPoint notes pages .

There are a number of problems with PowerPoint notes pages that it’s worth knowing about.

You can’t add hyperlinks to objects in Notes Pages. However, if your text includes a URL, then the text itself will turn into hyperlink. If you really want to add hyperlinks to PowerPoint notes pages, you can create an object with a hyperlink in the Normal view (standard presentation editing) and then copy/paste that into the notes page, and the hyperlink will work. It seems bizarre, but there you are.

As noted above, it’s confusing that you can’t change the notes page size anywhere in the PowerPoint interface. In the Notes Master, there’s a group called Page Size where you can change the orientation of the page and the size of the slide, but it’s the size of the presentation slide , not the notes page . Doing this could ruin your actual presentation. To change the page size itself, you have to go to File > Print > Printer > Printer Properties > Mordor > Paper Quality > Mount Doom > Paper Sizes .

Print setup

If you do change your notes page size, then it’s per printer, not for the document. And so you end up changing the notes page for all subsequent presentations that you open. If you go on to choose another printer, or decide to print to PDF, then it changes the notes page size again. And of course, this will cause problems sharing the file with others, especially if they’re in a different country and use a different paper size (Letter in the US and A4 everywhere else, for example).

Placeholder scaling

When you change notes page size, the scaling of the placeholder elements is odd. It seems like it doesn’t like the slide image placeholder especially, which scales differently and ends up partially off the page, so ideally change the notes page size right at the start, before you do anything else.

No outline on slide image

All the slide images have a thin black line around them, which is OK, but doesn’t look great. However, applying ‘no outline’ to the slide image in the notes page makes the slide image disappear completely. If you want to remove the outline, you can apply an outline with 100% transparency, which means the line is invisible. No, I don’t understand it either.

Guides are a really useful way to ensure alignment, especially to a grid. But in the PowerPoint notes pages, the guides function is pretty much unusable. At least sensibly. If you create guides, their position is based on the size of the presentation slide, not the page. So if a slide is 13.3”x7.5”, then guide positions are measured using that boundary. You can’t have a guide that is more than 7.5” from the top of the page (but the standard portrait letter page is 10” tall, so guides cannot be dragged into the bottom quarter of the page). Also, the 0/0 centre point of the horizontal and vertical guides is somewhere near the right-hand edge of the page, about a third of the way from the top. If you’re OK with just using guides to create a grid of vertical bars, and happy to work out the odd position measurements, then you’re golden, but it feels somewhat incomplete, which is a shame.

When you want to print notes in PowerPoint, go to the File tab in the top left of the ribbon (or use Ctrl + P ), and then choose Print from the menu on the left-hand side. Here you have a number of options, but the key ones are under settings in the middle on the left, where you need to click the Print Layout drop-down (which says Full Page Slides by default) and select Notes Pages . This will print out the notes pages that you’ve formatted, or you can choose to just print PowerPoint Full Page Slides , or Handouts .

You can choose to print all the slides or notes pages, just the ones you’ve selected (in the normal view) or type specific slide or page numbers to print. In this same drop-down menu, you can also choose whether to print hidden slides. This can be useful if you have hidden detail slides that you don’t want to present, but you’d like to print notes in PowerPoint for all the slides in your deck.

There are also options for one- and two-sided printing (which will depend on your printer’s capabilities), and also collation options. You can also choose to print in color or using the grayscale or black and white settings. Find more details on that below .

Remember to choose your printer using the button at the top of the list. Clicking the drop-down menu will allow you to change printer. Be really careful when doing this, as the default paper size may change for the new printer, which will ruin the layout of the notes pages – scaling is often glitchy and if you’ve lined things up beautifully then you’ll be disappointed. You can also use this drop-down menu to print PowerPoint with notes as PDF using Microsoft Print to PDF . However, be warned, the PDF printer page size is slightly different from the standard printer one. More specifically, the margins for the page size are different. For physical printers, PowerPoint takes into account a half inch border around the page, knowing that printers generally won’t work edge to edge. But for PDF that’s not needed, so those margins are removed. You need to think carefully about what you want your notes to look like. If you want them to look like they do on-screen, then go into Settings > Print Layout , and select Scale to Fit Paper . Or if you want it to look like a printed page, with the default print margins (perhaps because you want to print it later), then deselect Scale to Fit Paper and you’ll get the full margins all around.

If altering all these print settings seems a bit tedious, and you regularly do the same thing each time, you can choose default print settings to suit you. Go to the File tab on the ribbon, choose Options on the bottom left then select Advanced from the pop-up window menu. Next, scroll all the way down (don’t worry, we’re almost there!), and you’ll find two sets of printing options. The standard ‘ Print’ functions may not be useful, but below it, there’s ‘ When printing this document ’. The standard PowerPoint behavior is to use whatever settings you last used, so if you print lots of different types of documents then you have to constantly change things. Alternatively, these settings allow you to set the default printing settings for each presentation file you have open. So it might be that one particular presentation is only ever printed with notes in grayscale, while another is full slides in color.

It’s the same collection of settings as outlined in the printer options above, but you just set them for each document, which can cause slightly less frustration.

Print PowerPoint PowerPoint notes in grayscale or black and white

If you’re printing in color, you will hopefully see if the contrast ratios are correct clear, as the screen is showing what will be printed – although it’s always worth checking to see if there are any accessibility issues with it, for example is the color contrast high enough to be legible for people with common forms of color blindness . Our free BrightSlide add-in has a built-in color contrast checker for PowerPoint that can be really useful. However, if you’re printing in grayscale then it can be a bit more problematic, because you don’t know how the printer will interpret the colors you’ve chosen. Fortunately, PowerPoint gives you some neat tools to manage this and give you a grayscale specific print version of your slides that doesn’t impact your color presentation at all.

Go to the View tab on the ribbon and choose the Grayscale option. Now, you can see what the slide will look like when printed in grayscale. You also get a new tab on the ribbon called Grayscale . The commands on this ribbon allow you to change the grayscale formatting of any object on the slide without changing the color formatting when you’re presenting. So, if something doesn’t look right, you can make it darker or lighter, black or white, or even choose not to show the object. This is great if you want to make sure you get the best print from a black and white printer.

It’s worth noting that there are a couple of quirks. If you have text in a shape, or a textbox with a fill color, then these settings only apply to the fill color of the object, not the text. However, if you have a plain textbox with no fill color, then the settings apply to the text itself. Also, there is a ‘ Don’t Show ’ option, which is great to remove ink-heavy content like images or big blocks of color, especially in the background. Irritatingly, if there is text typed into the object, then choosing Don’t Show will hide the object, but not the text. This feels odd, given that the ‘ White ’ option essentially does the same thing if you’re using a white background (makes the object fill or a picture appear white, so it’s invisible when printed on paper). And when printing in grayscale or black and white, any slide background fill is automatically removed. However, graphics on the slide master aren’t, so just be aware that you may not get quite the result you want, depending on how the slide master was built.

To hide all graphics from the background and the slide master, right-click on the slide and choose Format Background from the pop-up menu. In the window that appears on the right, there’s a check box to Hide background graphics . This is a setting for each slide individually AND it affects your presentation slides, so be careful about using it, or reset when you’re done printing.

And all of this is also available in the Black and White settings, which can be helpful for even more frugal use of ink, or to create an ultra-high-contrast version, essentially giving you two custom versions of your presentation that can be used for printing, but don’t impact the actual presentation slides.

Of course, it could be that all you want is to export your speaker notes to Word and print those, rather than print PowerPoint slides with notes. You can do this in PowerPoint by:

• Go to the File tab in the ribbon and select Export on the left-hand side
• Choose Create Handouts in the grey menu bar
• Click the Create Handouts button on the right
• Then choose Notes below slides from the pop-up menu

This will produce a Word document with a thumbnail of each slide with speaker notes underneath. The nice thing about this is that if you change the slides, then they will change in the Word document. But the speaker notes don’t, which may or may not be helpful. The big issue is that it’s Word, and dealing with images in Word can often be tricky if you want to format things precisely. So think about whether you’ll want to format this document further.

If you want to export speaker notes to other programs, our free BrightSlide add-in for PowerPoint allows you to do exactly that. On the BrightSlide tab in the ribbon, go to Review on the right-hand side, then Speaker Notes , and Export to Text File , Export to Excel File , and even Export to Word File . You’ll get an automatically generated Text, Excel, or Word document with the speaker notes of every slide. In Word you’ll get the title from each slide added with Heading 1 formatting, allowing you to easily navigate through it all. BrightSlide will also give you a total word count for the notes or allow you to delete all speaker notes from PowerPoint.

And there you have it, plenty of options showing you how to print PowerPoint with notes. But just because you can doesn’t necessarily mean you should print notes in PowerPoint for every presentation. Consider what will be most helpful to your audience, and perhaps consider more dedicated and specific handouts for them instead. You can go even further, as demonstrated by Nolan Haims, who has done some lovely print work using PowerPoint. For example, this report on non-profit funding in the age of Covid that he created for the Center for Effective Philanthropy, and a funding report in spreads that you can see in his portfolio.

Richard Goring

Related articles, how to create powerpoint templates that work.

• PowerPoint design

Without a proper PowerPoint template, presentations can be a bit of a mess. Here are the building blocks for developing a PowerPoint template that works!

Presentation design principles for better PowerPoint design

• PowerPoint design / PowerPoint productivity
• Comments: 17

By applying some key principles of presentation design, you can make your PowerPoint design really standout and deliver both a more ‘popping’, but also more effective presentation.

How to create visual presentations and eLearning

• PowerPoint design / Visual communication
• Comments: 4

Most presentations are a cascade of text-heavy Death-by-PowerPoint slides. Online learners suffer the torture of brochures converted to click-through-eLearning. Most people now recognize that using visuals is the way to go. But how do you make visual presentations and eLearning that work? We think there are six steps you need to follow.

Good morning,

Would you please orient me o how to design and create colored pages in power point with writing in it. i want to insert them in my facebook page.

Thanks in advance Youness,

Hi Youness. Probably the best way is to change the background colour of your slide and then add a text box over the top. Go to the ‘Design’ tab on the ribbon, then ‘Format Background’ on the right-hand side. That will give you he ability to apply a solid fill colour of your choice. And you then put any content you like on top of that colour.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment.

Join the BrightCarbon mailing list for monthly invites and resources

As we were novice and non-marketing professionals, everyone took the time to explain and teach while also doing, which came in handy to feel more comfortable with what we were creating. Marc Chaanine Jamaica Bearings

How to print a PowerPoint presentation with notes to keep you organized and help your audience follow along

• It's easy to print a PowerPoint presentation with notes so that you can reference talking points or so that your audience can follow every detail. 
• To print a PowerPoint slide presentation with notes, all you have to do is change the print settings to include presentation notes. 
• Visit Business Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories .

PowerPoint , the presentation program from Microsoft , offers a plethora of features that can help you make the best presentation possible. One of these features is the ability to print your PowerPoint presentations with speaker notes.

This feature could be incredibly useful in business settings, especially if you are giving a very detailed presentation and you want to give your audience the ability to follow along easily. 

It can also be useful to help you rehearse your presentation, or keep you organized when you're giving it.

It's simple to print your PowerPoint slides with notes. All you have to do is change one setting in the "Print" menu. It's a little different if you use a Mac instead of a PC , but the two processes are very similar. 

Check out the products mentioned in this article:

Microsoft office (from $149.99 at best buy), apple macbook pro (from $1,299.00 at apple), acer chromebook 15 (from $179.99 at walmart), how to print powerpoint with notes on a pc.

1. With PowerPoint open on your PC, click "File" in the top left corner.

2. In the sidebar of the "File" menu, click "Print."

3. On the "Print" menu, under "Settings", click the dropdown menu that allows you to choose how to print the slides. Click "Full Page Slides," which will reveal a dropdown menu.

4. From the dropdown menu, select "Notes Pages."

5. Then, select "Print." 

How to print PowerPoint with notes on a Mac

1. With PowerPoint open on your Mac, click "File" in the top left corner.

2. In the pop-up print menu, click "Show Details."

3. In the "Layout" box, click "Notes" to add the presentation notes.

4. Make sure all your other settings are configured as you want them.

5. Then, select "Print."

Related coverage from  Tech Reference :

How to change and format the background of your powerpoint slides to custom designs, how to convert a powerpoint to google slides in two different ways, how to make a powerpoint presentation into a video, so that it plays automatically without you having to click through each slide, how to add music to a powerpoint slideshow to make your presentation more engaging, how to download and access microsoft powerpoint on your mac computer.

Insider Inc. receives a commission when you buy through our links.

Watch: Meet the former advertising creative who has built a career out of writing positive post-it notes to strangers around London

• Main content

The #1 Method: How to Print PowerPoint with Notes

Introduction, how to print powerpoint with notes – the easy way, how to customize your powerpoint notes, how to create handouts in powerpoint, how to only print the notes in powerpoint, how to print a powerpoint presentation with comments, powerpoint notes – best practices, related posts, how to add music to powerpoint slideshow and find free music, how to record audio in powerpoint for narration or voice-over | step-by-step, [solved] how to upload powerpoint to google drive.

Print slides with or without speaker notes

It’s actually simpler to print slides without speaker notes than with them—in fact, there is only one way to print speaker notes with slides.

Click File > Print .

Under Settings , click the second box (which defaults to say Full Page Slides ), then under Print Layout , click Notes Pages .

Notes Pages prints one slide per page, with speaker notes below. The Preview Pane shows you what each layout option looks like.

Put in the other settings, such as which slides you want, how many copies, and so on.

Click Print .

The other options under Print Layout , and all of the options under Handouts , print only slides or slide content, not speaker notes.

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

Microsoft 365 training

Microsoft security

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

Ask the Microsoft Community

Microsoft Tech Community

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Was this information helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

• Summarize PowerPoints with AI
• Summarize Word documents with AI
• Summarize PDF with AI
• Generate PowerPoints with AI from text
• Create Presentation with AI
• Create Presentations with AI from PDF
• GPT for Presentations
• Create Presentations from Website with AI
• Chat with Document Groups
• Import files from Cloud
• Book a demo
• September 27, 2024
• Comments Off on 5 easy ways to turn your meeting notes into a presentation
• Artificial Intelligence
• 5 easy ways to turn your meeting notes into a presentation

Turning your meeting notes into a structured presentation doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Whether you’re summarizing key points, capturing action items, or presenting ideas to your team, several innovative methods make it easy to convert notes into visually engaging presentations. In this post, we’ll explore five approaches, mixing both tech-driven solutions and more traditional methods. Each method caters to different styles and needs, so you can choose the one that fits your workflow best.

Here is a snapshot of the methods we will look at in this article

• Plan out action items with this mind mapping tool
• Best for the creative users
• Try XMind now
• Turn your notes into a presentation with AI
• Extract key information from your meeting notes via the chatbot
• Try SlideSpeak now
• Transcribe meetings automatically
• Turn your voice memos into text and plan your presentation
• Try Otter.ai now
• Create engaging presentations from templates
• Collaborate with team members in real time
• Try Canva now
• Integrates with your wider G Suite workflow
• Uses AI to summarize meeting notes
• Try Google Gemini now

1. XMind- Mind Mapping

For meetings where ideas, tasks, and decisions are interconnected, transforming complex notes into a structured presentation can be daunting. XMind , a powerful mind-mapping tool, provides an effective way to visually organize your thoughts before turning them into slides. By using a mind map, you can create a logical flow of ideas that naturally translates into a presentation framework.

How to use XMind to turn your meeting notes into a presentation

You can choose to start from scratch or by using a template. Now you can begin entering your notes into XMind , breaking them down into core branches such as “Key Decisions,” “Next Steps,” or “Challenges.” From there, you can create sub-branches for more detailed points. This step transforms your meeting notes into a clear, visual outline.

Each branch of your mind map can become a main section of your presentation. For example, if you have branches labeled “Goals,” “Challenges,” and “Action Items,” those can serve as the headers for your slides. Sub-branches will then translate into bullet points or key content for each slide. This method ensures your presentation follows a coherent, structured narrative, making it easy for both you and your audience to follow the flow of information.

You can use AI to assist in building out the mind map. Simply select the XMind AI tool in the toolbar at the bottom of your screen. This can generate ideas, add detail to notes and much more.

By using the mind map as a direct framework, you effectively pre-plan the layout of your slides. This eliminates the need to start from scratch when creating your presentation. Once the mind map is complete, you can export it as a PDF or image and integrate it into presentation tools like SlideSpeak.

Overall, this method is slightly more manual but thanks to tools like SlideSpeak , you can easily turn these mind map notes into a presentation with AI.

Now, let’s discuss SlideSpeak in more detail.

2. SlideSpeak- Using AI to turn your notes into presentations

If you prefer a more direct approach with minimal manual input, SlideSpeak is an excellent option. This AI-powered tool allows you to upload any document—whether it’s a PDF, Word file, or Excel sheet—and automatically converts your meeting notes into a well-structured presentation. It’s perfect for users who need a fast solution without extensive editing.

How to use SlideSpeak to turn your meeting notes into a presentation

Log in to SlideSpeak via- https://app.slidespeak.co/

“Click to upload” your meeting notes. You can upload your notes in a variety of formats, including PDF, Word, or even PowerPoint format.

You will then be able to chat with your notes via SlideSpeak’s AI.

This allows you to summarize your notes and create a slide plan. From here you can interact with the AI in order to specify as much detail as you would like.

Unlike XMind , SlideSpeak goes one step further and actually creates the presentation for you with AI.

Although the AI does most of the heavy lifting, you have the freedom to adjust fonts, layouts, and add any additional visuals or branding elements.

You can then download the presentation to Microsoft PowerPoint and perform any unique edits. Or you can download the presentation as a PDF.

Either way, you are now ready to present your meeting notes to your team!

SlideSpeak is perfect for anyone working under tight deadlines, as it converts your notes into clear, concise slides in just minutes. Plus, it eliminates the need for repetitive manual tasks while giving you just enough flexibility to fine-tune the final product.

Learn more about creating a presentation from a document with SlideSpeak.

3. Otter.ai- Record your voice memos and transcribe your meetings

For those who find it easier to speak their thoughts rather than write them down, Otter.ai offers a fantastic solution. Instead of manually typing out your meeting notes, you can record voice memos or live conversations, and Otter.ai will automatically transcribe them into text, which you can then convert into a presentation.

How to use Otter.ai to turn your meeting notes into a presentation

Use Otter.ai to record live meetings or post-meeting voice memos where you summarize key points. Otter.ai will transcribe the audio into text automatically.

Once the meeting is transcribed, you can quickly edit and organize the text, focusing on key points, actions, and takeaways. This is where you can begin to think about what you want your presentation to look like.

In the next step, we will be using AI to convert the transcription into a presentation. Therefore, you must structure your notes in a way that will translate well into the storyline of your presentation.

Once you are happy with your transcription text, you can choose to manually copy the text into a template on Canva for example. Or you can add your notes to a document and use a tool like SlideSpeak to convert that document into a presentation automatically.

Both options will save you a lot of time but overall, Otter.ai is perfect for fast-paced meetings where note-taking may not be possible. It ensures you don’t miss out on any crucial details and allows you to focus on what is being discussed. Plus, it helps streamline the transition from spoken discussions to a full presentation.

4. Canva- Turn your notes into visual storylines

For those looking to add a strong visual element to their presentations, Canva is an excellent tool. While Canva is known for its ease of use, it also offers a wide variety of templates and visual elements that can take your meeting notes from plain text to a clean presentation.

How to use Canva to turn your meeting notes into a presentation

Start with one of Canva’s many presentation templates.

They really do offer a template for everybody.

Select the template that suits the tone of your content—whether it’s professional, minimalist, or more creative.

Break your meeting notes into key sections and input them into Canva’s slides. The platform makes it easy to drag and drop text, icons, and charts.

Or you may wish to copy and paste the plain text from your meeting notes document.

Take advantage of Canva’s vast library of images, icons, and charts to bring your key points to life. Visual storytelling can make even dry meeting notes much more engaging.

We particularly recommend the graphics of Canva – there is so much variety!

Overall, Canva involves a little more manual work in copying over notes but we think it excels in its design capabilities so it is worthy of being in this list.

5. Google Gemini- Working with your documents and slides

If you’re already using Google Docs to capture your meeting notes, leveraging Google Gemini can be a game-changer. This powerful AI tool works hand-in-hand with your documents to extract key information and automatically generate slides, saving you significant time.

How to use Google Gemini to turn your meeting notes into a presentation

Structure your meeting notes by key categories, such as objectives, actions, and key insights. A clear outline makes it easier for the AI to understand and process your content.

This part is slightly more manual but by giving the AI a solid foundation, the result will be much better.

As a reminder, Google Gemini can be accessed in the top right corner of your Google Docs.

Once your document is ready, you can use Google Gemini’s AI capabilities to analyze your notes and generate a summary or a slide plan.

The AI summary is good for when your manager wants a 2 minute overview of the meeting and what was discussed.

You can insert this summary into your document via the arrow at the bottom of your Gemini response. We have highlighted it in this picture.

After Google Gemini generates the slide outline, you can begin to create the presentation in Google Slides. Use the prompt window to reference your documents e.g. @”name of file”. This will then tell Google Gemini what content to use for the slides.

This method is great for those who already use Google Workspace. It’s ideal for busy professionals who need an efficient way to go from meeting minutes to polished summaries. The presentation side of things is still inferior to SlideSpeak but it is worth trying out.

There are multiple ways to convert meeting notes into a polished presentation, and the best method for you depends on your needs and workflow.

Whether you’re looking for AI-driven solutions like SlideSpeak or Google Gemini for fast automation, or prefer creative flexibility with tools like Canva and XMind , there’s an option for every style.

For those who need a quick turnaround with minimal effort, SlideSpeak offers a seamless, AI-powered solution that saves time while still delivering high-quality results.

Try SlideSpeak now!

Related Post

5 ways to redesign your powerpoint presentation

• September 20, 2024
• Comments Off on 5 ways to redesign your powerpoint presentation

Top 5 AI tools for consultants

• September 13, 2024
• Comments Off on Top 5 AI tools for consultants

Top 5 AI Tools for Teachers

• September 6, 2024
• Comments Off on Top 5 AI Tools for Teachers

AI generate presentations and summaries.

Summarize and generate PowerPoint files with ChatGPT. Upload, chat, and gain new insights from your presentations. Use SlideSpeak AI to boost your productivity.

• Help Center
• Affiliate Program 💵
• Call us: +1 ‪(512) 777-1759‬
• Compress PowerPoint
• Convert PowerPoint to PDF
• Convert PowerPoint to PSD
• Convert PowerPoint to Figma
• Convert PDF to Word
• Extract Images from PowerPoint
• Extract Images from Word
• Extract Images from PDF
• Terms of Service
• Refund Policy
• SlideSpeak vs Gamma
• SlideSpeak vs Decktopus