What is the Purpose of Fast Saves?
The idea behind Fast Saves in PowerPoint, is to save only the most recent changes to the presentation. It seems like a good idea and probably is a little faster. However, what you probably don't know is that all these fast saves are increasing the size of your PowerPoint presentation. In the background, each incremental save is added on to the original presentation file information, so the file size just gets bigger and bigger.
Why Should I Reduce the PowerPoint File Size?
PowerPoint presentations, in general, end up being larger than other types of files due to the nature of the content. They are often full of pictures, graphs or charts and frequently they also contain many animations. Larger presentation files can use up more computer resources and slow down the presentation. In some cases, the file can be too large for the computer to handle and the presentation can crash -- often with disastrous results.
To make sure that PowerPoint saves your complete presentation, without all the incremental saving, you need to turn off a feature called Fast Saves. The difference in the amount of time we are talking about is minimal anyway, but it can make a huge difference in reducing the file size.
How Do I Turn Off Fast Saves?
- Choose Tools > Options from the menu.
- Click on the Save tab.
- Under the Save options section, remove the check mark before Allow fast saves.
- Click OK
