PowerPoint to PDF Conversion

LaOs

I have PowerPoint files that have been sent to me to be converted to PDF files for uploading for a course for students to download. I have Adobe Arobat 8 Professional and am using PowerPoint 2003. I'm on a Windows XP Machine, but that's about all I know about it.

When I use the button on the PDF toolbar to convert a PowerPoint presentation to PDF, it appears to work. It creates the .pdf file, but it seems to be ignoring some images on some slides. For example, the file I'm looking at right now ignores the image on the second slide, even though it includes the title/text on the slide. It also is ignoring a number of images throughout the rest of the presentation (and some slides it just leaves blank completely) Oh yes, when I say it's ignoring the images or slides, I mean it's just creating a blank slide (or sometimes a slide with just the text rather than the text and the image).

Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can avoid/correct this? I just ran through the presentation and there are no animations or fancy things like that, so my one guess was bunk.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Trentus

Well... the best thing I can suggest is not to use Acrobat... I've had a lot of success with CutePDF (the freeware version) in the past. I know it's kind of a sucky solution in that you'd probably rather fix whatever is going wrong in Acrobat... but at least you can get the thing converted.

bowen

I suggest using Zan Image Printer. I recommend this in the highest regards. You use it just like a printer, so print one slide per page and print to a PDF type document and you should be golden.

We use it for our internal systems where I work.

Trentus

bowen wrote: »

You use it just like a printer, so print one slide per page and print to a PDF type document and you should be golden.

This is how CutePDF does things too. Seems to be the popular method... I might have to give Zan a go one day.

bowen

It can be customized by your user profile and it works wonderfully. They recently added in some advancements where text printed to it will be searchable and selectable now. It used to basically be a huge JPEG screen shot of the page so you really couldn't do any OCR with it.

Daenris

It's actually also how Acrobat does it. By pressing the button on the toolbar you might not be setting all the appropriate print options. So I suggest (before going to install any other tools) first try going to Print, and select the Adobe PDF printer, and check all the options on your print screen to make sure it looks like it's set up correctly.

Maybe even try printing it on an actual printer -- or just the bad pages if it's a long presentation -- to make sure it's set up to print correctly. If it doesn't print correctly on a regular printer it's not going to print correctly on any of the PDF printer software.

embrik

Daenris wrote: »

It's actually also how Acrobat does it. By pressing the button on the toolbar you might not be setting all the appropriate print options. So I suggest (before going to install any other tools) first try going to Print, and select the Adobe PDF printer, and check all the options on your print screen to make sure it looks like it's set up correctly.

Maybe even try printing it on an actual printer -- or just the bad pages if it's a long presentation -- to make sure it's set up to print correctly. If it doesn't print correctly on a regular printer it's not going to print correctly on any of the PDF printer software.

This is exactly what you need to do. Adobe will handle it, it may just need some options changed. If you've already got the full software, recommending other software in this case is just silly. Try these excellent suggestions first.

LaOs

Well, going to Print and changing the Printer to Adobe PDF, it worked. I'm not sure why it was different, but that seems to have fixed the problem. I may just have to remember to go to Print and change the printer from now on instead of using the toolbar button.

So, thanks Daenris. I didn't end up changing any print options (and didn't see any options I could change that seemed like they would make a difference), but at least you led me to the answer I needed. Ha!

bowen

embrik wrote: »

Daenris wrote: »

It's actually also how Acrobat does it. By pressing the button on the toolbar you might not be setting all the appropriate print options. So I suggest (before going to install any other tools) first try going to Print, and select the Adobe PDF printer, and check all the options on your print screen to make sure it looks like it's set up correctly.

Maybe even try printing it on an actual printer -- or just the bad pages if it's a long presentation -- to make sure it's set up to print correctly. If it doesn't print correctly on a regular printer it's not going to print correctly on any of the PDF printer software.

This is exactly what you need to do. Adobe will handle it, it may just need some options changed. If you've already got the full software, recommending other software in this case is just silly. Try these excellent suggestions first.

I've had trouble with Adobe's PDF printer royally messing up my documents with images. Hence my suggestion. Just saying.

And congrats on getting it to work.