How to Print Multiple Slides Per Page in Microsoft PowerPoint

When you are presenting a dense, data-heavy slideshow to a boardroom or a university class, it is often helpful to provide your audience with physical paper handouts. However, printing a 50-slide presentation at one slide per page is a massive waste of paper and ink, and it forces your audience to flip through a bulky stack of documents. Fortunately, Microsoft PowerPoint includes built-in print settings specifically designed to shrink and tile multiple slides onto a single sheet of paper, perfectly formatted for audience handouts.

How to Print Multiple Slides on One Page

To access the advanced handout printing options, you must navigate through the standard backstage print menu.

1. Open your completed presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint.
2. Click on the File tab in the top-left corner of the ribbon menu.
3. Select Print from the left-hand navigation pane (or press Ctrl + P).
4. In the central settings column, locate the drop-down menu that currently says Full Page Slides (this is the second drop-down under the “Settings” header).
5. Click on this menu to open the “Print Layout” options.
6. Look under the Handouts section of this menu. You will see options to print 2, 3, 4, 6, or 9 slides per page.
7. Select your preferred layout.
   • Pro Tip: The 3 Slides option is generally the most popular for meetings, as it prints three slides down the left side of the paper and automatically generates blank ruling lines on the right side for the audience to take notes.
8. The preview pane on the right side of your screen will instantly update to show exactly how the printed page will look.
9. If you are printing 4, 6, or 9 slides, you can return to that same drop-down menu and choose whether you want the slides ordered Horizontally (left to right) or Vertically (top to bottom).
10. Once you are satisfied with the preview, click the large square Print button at the top of the menu.

Saving Handouts as a PDF

If you are hosting a virtual meeting and want to email these condensed handouts to your attendees instead of physically printing them, you can easily save the layout as a PDF file.

1. Follow all the steps above to configure your desired 3-slide or 6-slide handout layout.
2. Instead of clicking the final Print button, look at the Printer drop-down menu at the very top.
3. Change your selected physical printer to Microsoft Print to PDF (on Windows) or select “Save as PDF” from the PDF drop-down menu (on Mac).
4. Click the Print button.
5. PowerPoint will open a standard “Save As” dialog box, allowing you to name the file and save the multi-slide layout as a highly portable digital PDF document.