Print posters or other large format output

PPTools
Shape Styles brings the power of styles to PowerPoint. Apply complex formatting with a single click
Merge Excel, CSV or tab-delimited data into PowerPoint presentations to create certificates, awards presentations, personalized presentations and more
FixLinks prevents broken links when you distribute PowerPoint presentations
Optimizer saves disk space and bandwidth, shrinks your PowerPoint presentations to the right size for email, screenshow or printing
PPT2HTML gives you full control of PowerPoint HTML output, helps meet Section 508 accessibility requirements
Prep4PDF preserves interactivity in PowerPoint presentations when you convert to PDF
Image Export converts PowerPoint slides to JPG, PNG, GIF, WMF and more

Problem

You have a page in PowerPoint that you need to turn into a poster or other large-format size.
PowerPoint won't allow you to set a large enough page size.

or

You've set a large enough size in PowerPoint but your printer only goes up to letter-size or A4 output; you want PowerPoint to create multiple pages you can later tape together to create the final poster.

If you have a large-format printer
Create a custom page size that's the same proportions as your intended poster size.
For example, if your poster's to be 3 by 4 feet (36 x 48 inches) choose File, Page Setup and set the slide dimensions to, say, 3.6 x 4.8 inches).

Caution If you change the proportions of your slide after it's been created, you may distort the graphics and text on the slide. If your slide's already done and you need to change the proportions, start a new presentation, change its slide proportions, then select and copy the graphics from your original slide onto a slide in the new presentation.

When you're ready to print:

• Choose File, Print
• Pick the driver for your large format printer
• Click Properties and choose an appropriate page size
• Either choose the printer driver's option to scale output to your chosen paper size or choose "Scale to fit paper" option in PowerPoint's print dialog box
• Click OK to start printing

If you have a letter/A4 printer
PowerPoint can't help you directly here. It doesn't do "tiling" (breaking a single large page into multiple smaller ones).

See Print large-format slides to normal size paper (tile,tiling) to learn other ways of creating tiled output.

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

content authoring & site maintenance by

Friday - The Automatic FAQ Maker