printing from powerpoint viewers

  • Thread starter Thread starter guppytriptic
  • Start date Start date
G

guppytriptic

The popwerpoint viewers (97 or 2003, take your pick)
either do not print at all or print only the first slide
page, despite options that would have the user believe
that multiple slides on a page (handout format) will
occur.

All the viewer does is entice me to never buy powerpoint
again (I have a very old version which everything is
incompatible with now, and it cost me $400.) and make me
angry at collegues who send me powerpoint files.

A disgruntled academic.
 
Please don't confuse the Viewers with the PowerPoint application. The
Viewers are just viewers, not the full application, and as such they have
limited printing capability. You can print all or some slides, but no
handouts. If the designer of a presentation wants to make handouts or notes
available to others who do not have PowerPoint, there are a number of
options such as Acrobat, Word, etc.
 
The popwerpoint viewers (97 or 2003, take your pick)
either do not print at all or print only the first slide
page, despite options that would have the user believe
that multiple slides on a page (handout format) will
occur.
Click to expand...

It sounds like there are several issues here.
Let's take them one at a time and simplify things by limiting this to the
2003 viewer.

When you opt to print from the viewer, you get your chosen printer driver's
options dialog box rather than options supplied by the viewer. While the
viewer itself won't print handouts with multiple slides per page, your
printer driver may offer to do this. PostScript printers under Win2K do,
for example.

Unfortunately, the viewer apparently overrides this feature - I just tested
it here and you're right, it doesn't work. I think you've discovered a bug,
but it's hard to say whether it's a Viewer or printer driver bug. When I
switch to the Adobe PDF driver/Acrobat 6, multiple slides per page printouts
DO work.

In any case, it's not the viewer that's promising to make NN slides per page
printouts as it is the driver.

What happens when you don't choose this option and allow it to print
normally, one slide per page? Again, the reason for it failing to print
might be a printer driver problem.
 
[CRITICAL UPDATE - If you are using Office 2003, you should install this
update as soon as possible. From PowerPoint, choose "Help -> Check for
Updates".]

Hello,

PowerPoint Viewer 2003 prints slides the way they would print from
PowerPoint if you had chosen the print options to print slides in color. To
have additional options for printing your slides (or if you want to print
notes or handout pages) you would have to print them from PowerPoint (not
from the PowerPoint Viewer).

If it is important to you (or anyone else reading this message) that the
PowerPoint Viewer provide some additional print options, don't forget to
send your feedback to Microsoft at:

http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

As with all product suggestions, it's important that you not just state
your wish but also why it is important to you that your product suggestion
be implemented by Microsoft. Microsoft receives thousands of product
suggestions every day and we read each one but, in any given product
development cycle, there are only sufficient resources to address the ones
that are most important to our customers so take the extra time to state
your case as clearly and completely as possible.

IMPORTANT: Each submission should be a single suggestion (not a list of
suggestions).

John Langhans
Microsoft Corporation
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows

For FAQ's, highlights and top issues, visit the Microsoft PowerPoint
support center at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=ppt
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbhowto

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Use of any included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
 
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