Handouts sent to Word make huge files

Problem

When you choose File | Save & Send | Create Handouts (or the equivalent Send to Word command in earler versions of PowerPoint) , the resulting Word files are enormous; they open and save slowly and can be sluggish when you're trying to edit them.

Solution

Try this instead:

• Choose File | Save & Send | Create Handouts as you normally would, BUT ...
• In the dialog box that appears next, choose Paste link instead of the default Paste option.
• Click OK.

• Once the process finishes and you're looking at your handouts in Word, right-click any of the slide images, then choose Linked Slide Object | Links.

• In the Links dialog box that appears, select all of the links, then click Break Links.
• Save your Word handout document.

Result: A much smaller, faster handouts file in Word.

An automated approach: Bill Dilworth's Slide Into Word add-in

Bill Dilworth didn't like the size of these handout files either, and he figured the whole process of making them was clumsy and missing a few needed features. So he rolled his own. He calls it Slide Into Word.

Click the link, he'll tell you all about it and even let you try a fully functional demo for free.

Slide Into Word creates a Microsoft Word document that's pre-formatted to include a heading, the main table, and page numbering. The table contains three columns with slide numbering, images of the slides in your presentation (in either full color or gray scale), and a notes column (either notes from the notes section of the presentation, or blank lines for personal note-taking). Other user selectable options include:

• Changeable sizing of slide images
• An indication of how many manual animation advances are on each slide
• An indication of if any objects are off the viewable area of the slide
• Automatically saving the Word file to the same directory as the PowerPoint file

Another automated approach: Shyam Pillai's HandOut Wizard (HOW)

Shyam Pillai's Handout Wizard (HOW) takes a different approach to creating flexibly formatted handouts: it does the entire job in PowerPoint. You end up with an editable, printable, viewable PowerPoint presentation.

There are far more features than we can describe here. Visit the site, have a look for yourself.

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