Powerpoint: Compress and Optimize Presentations (ppt) to Decrease Size

Contributed by MickeyMouse June 11, 2006  
Tagged: Microsoft Powerpoint

Powerpoint will save pictures in a poorly compressed format by default. By asking powerpoint to compress these pictures, you can optimize your presentations more efficently. With this decreased size you can email them and transport them easily.

To allow for maximum amount of editing later, powerpoint saves pictures within presentations in a poorly compressed format. When working on a presenation locally, this is highly desirable because it gives you the most flexabilty in editing later. However, when trying to get your huge ppt file small enough to fit into an email or on a USB drive, this can be a problem. Here’s how to decrease the sizes.

Please note that many people use a pretty painful and manual process for this. This tutorial shows you the quickest way.

Compress PowerPoint In Versions Before 2007:

1. Open your powerpoint presentation
2. Click File Menu and then Save as
3. In the save dialog box, click the Tools drop down menu
4. Select Compress Pictures
5. Select All Pictures in document
6. Select Web/Screen unless you need to be able to print the presenation in high quality.
7. Select Compress pictures and Delete cropped areas of pictures
8. Click OK
9. Confirm that you want to Compress Pictures (if the dialog appears)
10. Save your presentation to a new file name (example: oct_reports_compressed.ppt)
11. Click Save

Compress PowerPoint In Office 2007:

1. Open your PPT file
2. Click the SAVE floppy icon in the upper left hand corner
3. Click the Tools drop down menu besides the save buttom
4. Select Compress Pictures
5. Click Options
6. Check Automatically perform basic compression on save
7. Check Delete cropped areas of pictures
8. Check the appropriate target output (print, screen, or email)
9. Click OK
10. Click OK to the Apply compression settings now dialog
11. Save file to different file name (ex: my_report_compressed.ppt)