You have a presentation in PowerPointTM and you want to have slides made.
Checklist of common errors when making slides.
Download a checklist in .PDF format you can print out and use.
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PowerPointTM to Slides
You have a presentation in PowerPointTM and you want to have slides made. |
Checklist of common errors when making slides. Download a checklist in .PDF format you can print out and use. |
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Page Setup: The page setup must be for 35mm slides. It is common to have the page setup for standard letter size or overhead projector output. This will cause the slide frame not to be filled. So to fill the slide set the File > Page Setup to 35mm. |
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Object Grouping: If you have an object you have imported (like a graph) and have made text boxes and lines and arrows to point to things, you may find that all the objects are not where they are supposed to be when the slide is made. The best way to keep objects correctly spaced relative to one another is to “group” them. Misalignment can occur when translating to different versions of PowerPointTM, when fonts are substitued, or during the “rasterization” step to expose the film. |
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Skirting the Edge: When you have set the page setup to 35 mm, the video screen represents the entire slide. When slide film is placed into a mount, a small amount of the image is covered. Keep everything you want to be seen well away from the edge of the slide. |
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Apply the Master Slide: A good looking slide presentation has more than just a similar background for all slides. Learn to use the slide master so that text is placed in the same area of each slide, with the same colors, font, size and emphasis. Use the outline view when possible to place text on a page, this allows for easy editing and allows you to spot problems easier. |
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Fonts: To make slides you have to know what fonts you are using. Not all computers have the same installed fonts so when a presentation is loaded onto another computer and run, it might not look the same. In fact, in some cases a change of fonts can ruing the whole look of a presentation. |
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Big Files: Every time you save a PowerPointTM file your changes are added onto the file, the file never gets smaller. Even if you delete half of your presentation, and then save, the file size won’t get smaller. The way to work around this is to do a final “save as” when you have finished the presentation and are ready to have slides made. Save the file under another name and the new file will usually be substantially smaller than the original. |
| Files with Images: Most of the objects PowerPointTMuses are vector based images (such as lines, fonts and some clipart). This allows the resolution of the object to be increased substantially when exposing to film. However, imported images have a fixed number of pixels and when projected to a large screen, pixelation (or a blurry image) may be noticed. To keep your images as sharp as possible, use a rule of thumb called the “3000 pixel width rule for slides.” Assume the full width of the slide is 3000 pixels. Any image you insert on the slide should have a proportional number of pixels. For example, if you insert an image that is about one third the width of the slide, then it should have about one third the number of pixels (or 1000 pixels) as a minimum in its width dimension in order to look sharp when projected. You can always use more pixels if you want. Something that looks good on a monitor may look awful when projected onto a ten foot screen if there are not enough pixels in the image. | |
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Orientations: Landscape or Portrait? Within PowerPointTM the orientations of the slides must be the same. We often need to have both orientations in our presentations. If this is what you need, make two files; one in portrait and the other in landscape. |
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