How to Print Large PowerPoint Handouts
 

Print Large PowerPoint Handouts

Have you ever attempted to print Power Point handouts using the built-in "Print Handouts" feature -- only to be frustrated at how large the margins Power Point gives? I bet you have battled with Power Point settings for setting the page margins, page orientation (which are indeed just portrait and landscape!), and maybe even attempted to wage into margins war by editing the Master slide header and footer settings! In all of these attempts, I am guessing that you have failed :P

In this tutorial, I'll share with you my personal tip on how I print larger Power Point handouts -- totally owning the maximum space of the paper handout. I will be using several free software in this tutorial -- (1) PDF Creator, and (2) Foxit PDF Reader.

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To start with, below is a short walk through for the installation of PDF Creator

1. Browse to Download | pdfforge.org for the download of PDF Creator
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2. Choose the stable version 1.7.2.
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3. Follow the installation instructions within the PDF Creator installer.

4. After installation, notice that a new printer shows up in your Devices and Printers list
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5. You have now successfully installed PDF Creator. PDF Creator is a free and open source program that allows you to Print/Convert any MS Office file, any picture file, and basically any type of file that you can print into a .PDF file.

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We continue with installing the second pre-requisite of this tutorial by installing Foxit PDF Reader

1. Browse to PDF Reader | PDF Viewer | Foxit Reader for the download of Foxit PDF Reader
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2. Choose the appropriate version of Foxit based on your Windows version
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We move on to the main problem -- Microsoft Power Point having its half-cooked feature of being able to print slides in handout mode

Below is a sample preview on a Power Point slide. Printing it slide by slide would take 8 pages. Taking note of being eco-friendly and simply saving-up on paper and ink
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Here, we attempt to print the slides using Power Point's Handout mode
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We click on File -- Print -- Select "Full Page Slides", Dropdown to "Handouts". And in this case we select the desired number of slides per handout page.

Notice that Power Point wants big margins in between the slides themselves, and even bigger margins between the slide borders and page borders.
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There has got to be a way to fix this right?

We dive deeper into the printing options.. and find that there is an option to "Scale to Fit to Paper"
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Click on this option to see if minimizes the margins..
See! It doesnt! Power Point just increases the slide sizes a tiny bit, still leaving a huge margin in between slides and the actual paper borders. Priting even at this option will render most Power Point Handouts with tiny unreadable text!

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Print Large PowerPoint Handouts -- THE SOLUTION!

Instead of using Power Point's "Print to Handout" feature, we make use of PDF Creator and Foxit PDF Reader!

1. On Power Point, we will "print" the document to "PDF Creator". What this does is have Power Point print the slides into a .PDF file instead of paper.
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Click on File -- Print -- Select PDF Creator as the printer.
Select Full Page Slides and dropdown, select Scale to Fit Paper
Click Print.


2. PDF Creator will pop-up and ask for the options that you would like for the PDF file. You may change the default values if you want to. Click on "Save".
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A .PDF version of your Power Point slide is created.


3. Use Foxit PDF Viewer to open the PDF file.
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4. On Foxit, select File -- Print
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Select your real printer
Choose to print "All Pages"
Click on Scale , select Reduce to Printer Margins, uncheck Auto-Rotate


5. Select Multiple Pages Per Sheet
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Set Page Order to Horizontal
Set Margins to 0.1 -- for least margin space, and bigger slide sizes
Set Print Page Border -- it would be helpful to check this for better visibility of your slides

Notice that so far, the page orientation is still in Portrait! This is indeed not the best way to print handouts, and it will not fully utilize the length of the paper. Proceed to Step 6 to tweak this option.


6. Click on the Properties button of your Printer
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7. Click in the Finishing tab.
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Set the Orientation to Landscape

8. Notice that the print preview of Foxit now shows landscape orientation and proper left-to-right arrangement of the slides.
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9. Click on Print and be relieved! Your Power Point handouts are now maximized!