Printing Options in PowerPoint

You can print slides, outlines, speaker notes, and audience handouts. You can print these in color, grayscale, or pure black-and-white. Items that are designed in color change when you print them in grayscale or in black-and-white. The following table compares the printing results of various colored objects when printed in grayscale versus black-and-white (table taken from The Microsoft Office 2000 Bible by Willett, Crowder, and Crowder)

PowerPoint 97 Windows, PowerPoint 2000 Windows

To print anything from PowerPoint choose FilePrint. The Print Dialog Box will appear. Here is a summary of the options:

You may choose to print

• all slides
• only selected slides
• only the current slide
• or just the slides from a custom show (choose the custom show from the drop-down list; if you have not defined one or more custom shows, you will not be able to make this selection)

For PowerPoint 98 Macintosh or PowerPoint 2001 Macintosh, select [Microsoft PowerPoint] from the drop-down list under the Printer drop-down list.

You may choose to print

• slides
• handouts
• notes pages
• outline view

If you select to print handouts, then this section will appear. Now choose how many slides per page you wish to appear on the handout

Note the check boxes for grayscale or pure black-and-white printing. Since PowerPoint does everything in color, you must check one of these boxes if you are not printing to a color printer!

PowerPoint 98 Macintosh, PowerPoint 2001 Macintosh

To print anything from PowerPoint choose FilePrint. The Print Dialog Box will appear. With [General] selected in the drop-down list at the top, here is a summary of the options:

Macintosh Print Dialog Box with [General] selected

You may choose to print

• all slides
• only selected slides
• only the current slide

With [Microsoft PowerPoint] selected in the drop-down list at the top, here is a summary of the options:

Macintosh Print Dialog Box with [Microsoft PowerPoint] selected and the full [Print What] list of choices displayed

You may choose to print

• slides
• handouts (note different choices for how many handouts per page)
• notes pages
• outline view

• You may choose to print just the slides from a custom show
• Choose the custom show from the drop-down list. The list is partially hidden since the [Print What] list is displayed.
• If you have not defined one or more custom shows, you will not be able to make this selection).

Note the check boxes for grayscale or pure black-and-white printing. Since PowerPoint does everything in color, you must check one of these boxes if you are not printing to a color printer!

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last updated August 12, 2003