Convert PowerPoint presentation with shadows, transparencies and links to PDF document

[Ancolie94]

Hello, I am trying to correctly set up a Powerpoint presentation that contains links to other slides, transparencies and shadows, before converting it to a PDF document. I have PDF Maker and PDF-XChange in POwerpoint. What format to choose and how to prepare the settings? Thanks for your help 🙂

[J E L]

Hi @Ancolie94 I see you don't have any replies yet, sorry about that! Can you first explain what you mean when you say your PowerPoint document "contains links to other slides, transparencies and shadows"? Are you talking about embedded (external) hyperlinks to various web pages or assets that you are linking to in order for them to appear in your document? What is your end goal for the document? How will people view or access it?

As for the options, they are pretty straightforward. Have you tried exporting to either type and seeing if the results are what you are looking for? My first screenshot below shows options for PDF export and the second one is for PDF/XPS. Also, with this option, you can save the file as either a PDF or an XPS document. Open XML documents can be made to support annotations if that is your goal.

[Ancolie94]

Hello Jain, thank you for your feedback. The problem is this: on PDF-XChange, the file, which originally weighs 12.5 Mb, is much more compressed (5 Mb) but the images are crisp. On the other hand, I deactivated the comments on Powerpoint but it displays them with in addition a thumbnail on the slide where the comment is located. 

With PDF Maker it weighs 18.5 Mb, but poor quality images are poorly handled.

Thanks for your help

[J E L]

Yes, I see the problem. One thing is that PowerPoint is geared for screen display so the images are compressed/converted to 72 dpi. Have you checked the dpi of these image files? PDF is by definition for printing, so images look best at 300 dpi.

Yes, with 300 dpi images the PDF and PowerPoint file sizes will be larger. There are some things you can do to reduce this without as much loss as you're seeing now. Also, after placing the image in PowerPoint, you should adjust the automatic image compression setting. It's under File > Reduce File Size. Check "Keep Current Resolution" from the drop-down menu.

You might want to check out this video to see if any of the tips help!

How To Convert PowerPoint to PDF (Step-by-Step) - YouTube

[Ancolie94]

Perfect, thanks a lot ! 😉