How to Print Speaker Notes in Powerpoint

When you make a presentation with Microsoft PowerPoint, you're often showing an audience an electronic slide show filled with data. This doesn't mean you've got to memorize everything not shown on the slide, such as asides or additional notes to tell the audience. PowerPoint facilitates a way for you to create notes to yourself as you design each slide. These "speaker notes" don't show up along with the slide; the audience will never know they're there. Instead, you print them out when preparing for the slide show.

Instructions

1. Open Microsoft PowerPoint, click the "File" tab and click "Open." Browse to the PowerPoint with the speaker notes to print and double-click the file name. The presentation opens in the PowerPoint workspace with the first/title slide showing. Any speaker notes on each slide will appear on the very bottom of the screen.

2. Add additional speaker notes by scrolling through the slides and typing into the bottom text box.

3. Click the "View" tab at the top of the screen. Click the "Notes Page" button on the left of the ribbon/toolbar below the tab. The view changes to a full-page view where you can see both the slide and the speaker notes associated with it.

4. Click the "File" tab and select "Print" to open the "Print" dialog.

5. Pull down the menu under the "Slides" header, which defaults to "Full Page Slides." Click the "Notes Pages" button. An image of one of the speaker notes pages fills the right third portion of the screen.

6. Click the "Print" button to print one copy of the speaker notes or nudge the "Copies" box up to the number of sets to print.

Tips & Warnings

• To print just the speaker note for each slide page and not the slide itself, while on the "Notes Page" view, click on the square frame surrounding the slide, which highlights it. Press the "Delete" button on the keyboard, which deletes the slide from the page, leaving only the speaker notes.

References

• University of Rhode Island: What is PowerPoint?