Reduce size of PowerPoint display

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wend
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Wend

Hello - I have a problem with a PowerPoint 2003 display (on disc). It is 115
mb in size! I need to reduce the size in order to place it on a school
website but can't work out how to do this. When I try to run the presentation
on my computer, the computer goes into Safe Mode!

Any advice would be very much appreciated!

Thanks.
 
Thank you for your swift reply John! I will take a look at the link later
this evening but I'm pretty sure the problem lies with the images and lots of
animated settings.
Will reply in more detail when I can get to look at the presentation.

Wendy :-)
 
It wont be the animations. If it's the images just go to the picture toolbar
and choose compress pictures > web page size (all pictures)

Before doing this or anything else make sure that "enable fast saves" is OFF
(never turn it back on!) You can find it in Tools > Options
--
Amazing PPT Hints, Tips and Tutorials

http://www.PPTAlchemy.co.uk
http://www.technologytrish.co.uk
email john AT technologytrish.co.uk
 
Wow! Following your instructions below has now reduced the size of the
presentation to 45 mb - a huge difference - thanks! Would you think I'd need
to compress it even more though to go on a website?

Wendy :-)
 
Hi Wendy,
Gosh, 45MB is still pretty big for a single file especially if it's going on
the web.

How many slides are there?
Would you think I'd need
to compress it even more though to go on a website?
Click to expand...

Short answer is yes. 45MB will take a long, long time to download.

When you say you're putting it on a website, are you...

A: Going to convert this to web pages so that each Powerpoint slide becomes
a web page?

B: Putting the whole Powerpoint file on the website so folks can download
it?

If it's B you need to get the size down. If it's a lot of slides (more than
50 let's say), is it possible to break the presentation into multiple files?

But if you need to keep this as one "solid" presentation and want to have
folks download it from a school website then one way or another it has to be
smaller.

Cheers,
Geoff
 
Thank you for pointing me to the "optimiser". Unfortunately it's leaves the
words "demo" in large red text on the presentation. I'm going to go back and
look through the first link you sent me which tells me how to reduce file
size. Having run the "SizeMe" add-in it clearly shows that the images are way
too large - the majority of them are "huge" and there are two that are
"massive" - ooerr! I think the teacher has scanned the images.

I'll "report back" once I've read through the other link!

Thanks again John,

Wendy :-)
 
Hello Geoff,

Thanks for your reply. In answer to your questions:

There are 21 slides.

The presentation is really just for viewing on the website. Ordinarily I
would have resized the images and made them into a web page, but this is a
christmas story for the children with animated effects - eg, a star moving
across the screen, a few camels walking along etc! If I had the software and
knew how to convert the presentation into something that played in Windows
Media Player I'd do that but not sure whether that is possible. Also, I'm not
sure why my computer goes into Safe Mode when I actually play the
presentation! Aaaargh!

As you will see in my reply to John above, I deifnately need to resize a lot
of the images don't I?!

Wendy :-)
 
Thank you for pointing me to the "optimiser". Unfortunately it's leaves the
words "demo" in large red text on the presentation.
Click to expand...

Correction: on a COPY of the presentation. It won't touch your original.

It's a commercial add-in; the free demo does "stamp" the slides like this. The paid version
does not. But if you get the size reduction you need from the demo version, the full
version will do the same. But w/o the demo stamp. ;-)

You can also export the presentation to HTML, use a paint program to downsample each of the
images in the HTML folder, then reopen the HTML version back into PPT.

A bit more manual_worky, but the price beats anything out there.
 
Wow! Following your instructions below has now reduced the size of the
presentation to 45 mb - a huge difference - thanks! Would you think I'd need
to compress it even more though to go on a website?
Click to expand...

Consider how long it takes to download a 45mb file (you'll have to guess at what sort of
connection most users will have). When users click the link, they'll see little or
nothing happen for that long ... most won't sit still and wait that long.

Or the short version: Yep, I'd try to get it down to a smaller size. ;-)
 
You can also export the presentation to HTML, use a paint program to downsample each of the
images in the HTML folder, then reopen the HTML version back into PPT.

A bit more manual_worky, but the price beats anything out there.
Click to expand...

Thanks Steve - I think this is the way forward for me - I don't mind putting
the extra work in as long as I know what I'm doing!! I don't use PowerPoint
very often (not that you'd notice!).

Wendy :-)
 
Hi Wendy

In addition to all the excellent advice you have had so far, I thought I
would throw my two pennies worth in :-)

Whenever I work with big images, once I have them the size on the screen I
want I cut -> edit -> paste special -> paste as jpg or png. It pops them back
bang in the middle of the slide so I usually set up gridlines beforehand to
make it easy to put them back where they were or I take a note of their
position from the format picture dialogue box. This reduces the file size
waaay more than the 'compress picture' option (in my experience).

Lucy
 
Thanks Steve - I think this is the way forward for me - I don't mind putting
the extra work in as long as I know what I'm doing!! I don't use PowerPoint
very often (not that you'd notice!).
Click to expand...

No problem ... and be sure you see Lucy's next message ... she beat me to the punch. <g>
 
I thought I'd let you know that it was easier for me to copy and paste the
much smaller images (without animations) into PhotoStory 3! The problem was
definately with the sizes of the images!
 
I thought I'd let you know that it was easier for me to copy and paste the
much smaller images (without animations) into PhotoStory 3! The problem was
definately with the sizes of the images!
Click to expand...

Glad you got it fixed ... thanks for coming back with your solution.
 
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