Print large-format slides to normal size paper (tile,tiling)
Problem
You have a presentation that's set up for poster size or other large-format page sizes and don't have a large-format printer. You want to print so that each slide gets blown up and spread across multiple printer pages so you can tape them together to make one big slide. This is called "tiling".
Solution
Can PowerPoint "tile" pages to normal letter-size printers so you can tape the output together later?
No ... afraid not.
But there are a few other possibilities:
- Some printers do tiling. Choose File, Print, pick your printer and then click Properties. Look for settings that will allow you to print tiled output directly from PowerPoint.
- Export your slide as a graphic (try WMF or EMF for starters) then use Insert, Picture, From File to bring it into Excel. Right-click and choose Format Picture to set the size you want the picture to be, then print. Excel will "tile" your printout across however many sheets it takes to accommodate your chosen picture size. (Thanks to CyberTaz and Matt/MS MacBU for that one)
- Create a Microsoft Publisher document with page size set to Poseter in File, Page Setup. In the same dialog box, you can choose the overlap options you want. Export your slide as a graphic (EMF or WMF) and bring it into this document and print.
- Recent versions of Adobe Acrobat can do tiled printing. Create a PDF from your PowerPoint page, then open the PDF in Acrobat and print from it.
- Corel Draw and other sophisticated drawing or desktop publishing programs can do tiled printing. If the program permits direct import of PPT files, try that; otherwise, copy/paste your slide from Slide Sorter view into the drawing/DTP app, then let it handle the tiled printing.
- There is free (GPL) software for Win 2k, 2003 server, XP (and possibly NT 4.0 also) that installs a virtual "poster printer" on your system. You print to it like any printer, and it will capture the image of the document pages (similar to a fax printer) and then pop up a "poster utility" dialog that will allow you to enlarge the image from any page of the document and print it to multiple pages. The "Directory" web site. The main web site, with screen shots to really show you what it can do. You can download it right away via the download page at SourceForge
- There are programs like FinePrint and specialized poster printing apps that do tiled printing. Try a Google search on "tiling" or "tiled printing" or similar terms.