Tip: Strategies to Reduce PowerPoint File Size


About this lesson

PowerPoint creates HUGE files. Learn four strategies to reduce the file size. Different ideas for specific needs of super compact to high fidelity images. We discuss why this is a problem and demonstrate different techniques to reduce your presentation size to fit in an email. Complete with a comparison matrix between different resolutions and PDF options.

Topics

  • 00:00 Intro
  • 01:07 #1 Send a Cloud Link
  • 02:27 #2 Create a PDF
  • 03:53 What caused file bloat
  • 04:11 Deal with Video Files
  • 04:40 Dealing with IMages
  • 05:05 Impact of Hi-Res on PowerPoint
  • 05:15 Comparing three different PPI Images
  • 06:05 How NOT To Reduce Image Size
  • 07:05 How To Reduce Image Size: Compression
  • 08:09 Comparing File Size by Strategy
  • 09:43 Recommend Four Strategies

Details

Subject Microsoft PowerPoint

Software Compatibility All Versions of PowerPoint-Windows & Mac

Level Tips

Course Completed Complete

PDF Files DOWNLOAD THE LESSON MATERIALS

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Transcript

[Music] powerpoint is a multimedia powerhouse that can result in humongous sized files that will either never fit within your corporate email file size limits or they’ll be unmanageable to upload and download hi this is les from power up training with a tip on how to reduce your powerpoint file sizes oops i just lied not one tip but four tips out of the nine possible ways that powerpoint provides you to be able to freeze down the size of your presentation files i am using a 16 slide presentation of photos that are high def that i’ve taken to the oregon coast and this turns into a huge file i’m currently showing this as an animated shift which i have a tutorial on but that’s not the best way to reduce file sizes for sending to others in the end i’m going to show you the actual results of the pros of cons of each strategy based off this huge file so let’s go power up on how to squeeze powerpoint files to manageable sizes choice number one is the easiest method upload your powerpoint presentation file to an internet web cloud service and send an email with the link to the file fast and straightforward for you if you go this route be sure to describe what you’re sending and how to open the link in your email just in case someone is concerned that it’s the malicious attachment link and today there are so many cloud choices to choose from with many having a free tier with basic storage space but there are implications first off is security if you’re sending sensitive information it is possible the recipient could forward that link but they can also do that with any file that you attach within an email and if you add extra layers of security then it might be more difficult for your recipient to be able to open the file furthermore if you are there working on a slow internet connection it may take extra time and possible data rate cost for everyone to deal with a large file lastly is just bad manners if you can reduce the size of your file why waste your recipients storage space with a bloated presentation file your second easy choice is to consider saving the presentation as a pdf pdf files are universal and can be read by any system with a variety of built-in readers or free pdf programs this would be an issue if you sent a powerpoint file and your recipient did not own powerpoint but it is not a problem with pdfs the bonus of saving as a pdf can be significantly reduced file sizes i will show some of the reduction examples in a few minutes how do you do it it is as simple as saving a copy as a pdf if you don’t know how powertraining has a cheat sheet listed in the comments below or you can master pdf saving by watching our youtube tutorial listed above and i find that paid pdf creator tools give you even more capabilities including selecting specific slides adding bookmarks and better compression choices a couple downsides to saving as a pdf is that it cannot be run as a slideshow unless the user knows how to put their pdf program into full screen mode but still you lose slide transitions and bullet point animations and it also can’t be edited which might actually be desirable so why are we even discussing this what makes powerpoint presentation files so unwieldly simple is the inclusion of images and photos and graphics and even worse embedded video and audio files so let’s deal with them first off the issue with embedded videos is simple don’t if you must use videos or audio files in your presentations don’t embed them into the slide deck instead make a link to a file stored elsewhere remember if you run this file elsewhere and the linked files are on the internet your success will depend upon your internet connection speed but while we can fix the embedded video file size issue graphics is not so easy powerpoint is a graphical communication tool so the inclusion of images is just part of what powerpoint is all about and lots of high quality images is typically the reason for humongous file sizes the trick to reducing your presentation size is to use smaller resolution images without impacting your slide deck’s visual attractiveness so what do i mean by reducing resolutions may or may not impact the visual attractiveness i’m about to show you three different quality resolutions of cape cowanda in the pacific ocean try to pick out the one which is the highest resolution and which one is the lowest on close examinations within youtube you may not be able to reveal much of a difference and it may be true on your conference room video projection system but there is a difference image 1 was reduced to the lower 96 pixels per inch and it does look more grainy compared to the other two but i would contend that the web 150 pixels per inch image number three is just fine and in fact it would look even better if you did not have image number two sitting right beside it as a comparison so how do we do this inside of powerpoint let’s do it note that this will work on all versions of powerpoint including as far back as office 2013 and also on a mac a step-by-step cheat sheet is included in the links below before we fix it here are rules number one and number two cropping and sizing inside of powerpoint does not reduce the file storage size watch as i drag the grab handles to make the photo smaller on the slide but nothing has really changed that’s when i tell powerpoint to revert to the original file dimension it balloons out to a huge image which is just wasting storage space inside of our presentation let me undo that and i’ll show you what happens when you crop an image when you crop basically what you’re doing is you’re slicing off the display to show only a portion of the original photo it does not delete the rest of the photo is only displaying a portion so how do you compress photos to save space inside of powerpoint step one is to select an image it won’t matter which image then look for the context aware room menu called picture format locate compressed picture and click now make sure that you have turned on delete cropped area of pictures and that you turn off apply only to this picture because you want to apply to all the pictures in your presentation the next choice is the resolution as we discussed earlier i find that choosing web at 150 pixels per inch is the best choice but if in a crunch you could choose email and then click ok and it will apply all the changes and it will immediately show up the next time you save your presentation and as a reminder you’ll find all these steps documented in a cheat sheet at our website of power-up dot training okay let’s see the results and the trade-offs the original 16 slide presentation as seen in our intro is a whopping 60 megabytes when using the compressed photos to print quality i did cut it down to half and it stayed as a powerpoint file if instead i chose to compress to web quality it shrink to 88 that might be enough at seven megabytes but it still may be too big for me to email it while i could go to email quality and keep it as a powerpoint presentation the file side goes down just a little to just 3.8 but i do start to lose visible quality so it’s not my preferred let’s look at a different strategy by saving it as a pdf and give up on trying to keep it as a powerpoint presentation the simple save of the original 60 megabyte file drops by 82 percent which is bigger than if i compressed it but it’s still an impressive savings with no changes but if i want the smallest file possible with no work and willing to accept some image quality reduction then the quick trick is to save the file as a pdf but use the more option and select minimum size that way we go from a 60 megabyte file to 2 megabytes as a pdf but there is some loss of image quality but we’ve got a really really small file so let’s summarize the easiest solution is to send the presentation to the cloud and provide a clickable link the quickest strategy that keeps great image quality is to save it as a pdf but you’ll no longer hold your animations and it can’t be edited since it’s no longer a powerpoint file the third choice is to keep it as a powerpoint file but compress your photos to an acceptable image level and if all else fails go back to save as a pdf and select the options before saving so that you can pick minimum size so there you go now you know how to squeeze your huge powerpoint presentations into a more manageable size for either storage on your local drive or for sending out via email if this was helpful go ahead and like it and share it with others also if you got questions or comments or recommendations for other videos leave them in the comments below and please subscribe subscriptions encourages me to make more free videos for you and lastly if you want the downloads for this appropriate tutorial or to see all of our training in powerpoint visit us at our website of power dash up dot training until next time go power [Music] up