A reader reacently asked -
"How can I print out handouts with a single slide on the page and also leave room for students to write notes?"
PowerPoint does have a feature to print out handouts. These handouts are often used as take-aways for the audience. Up to nine slides can be printed on one handout page, but the usual is about three slides per page to leave room for note taking.
Although you can print out a single slide per page using the "handouts" option, the slide is printed in the middle of the page, leaving little room for notes. So, there is another alternative which would be a better solution for this reader.
Printing Single PowerPoint Slides
Rather than choose to print handouts, instead, choose the option to print Notes Pages. This will print each slide on its own page, but the slide will be at the top of the page rather than in the middle, and the remainder of the slide will be blank to allow room for notes.
(Note - This is assuming that there were no speaker notes added already to the slide, which would result in those notes appearing below the slide.)
Steps to Print Notes Pages
- PowerPoint 2007 - Click on the Office button > Print to bring up the Print dialog box.
PowerPoint 2003 - Choose File > Print... from the menu to bring up the Print dialog box. - Select the correct printer from the drop down list if you have more than one printer installed on your system.
- Choose Notes Pages from the drop down list in the Print what: section in the bottom third of the Print dialog box.
- Click the Preview button to see how the slides will look.
- Click the Print button, which will return you to the Print dialog box.
- Select any other options, such as which slides to print, whether to print in color and so on.
- Click on OK
