Speaker Notes and Handouts
When to use
Use this skill when a deck has to exist in more than one form: the version on screen, the version the presenter reads from, and the version the room takes away. Symptoms that it is needed — notes that print in six-point grey, a leave-behind at nine slides per page that nobody can read, a handout with last quarter's date in the footer, or confidential notes that travelled to a client because nobody stripped them. Do not use it to write what the speaker should say; this skill governs the containers, not the script.
What it does
It configures the notes master and the handout master, chooses the right print and PDF route for each audience, and closes the leaks — stale footers, unstripped notes, unreadable thumbnails. The output is a configured pair of masters plus a print/export recipe per audience.
Method
1. Separate the three artefacts. They are different documents with different jobs and they are governed by different masters:
| Artefact | Governed by | Audience |
|---|---|---|
| The slides | Slide master and layouts | The room, on screen |
| Notes pages | Notes master | The presenter |
| Handouts | Handout master | The leave-behind |
In the file these are separate parts: ppt/notesMasters/notesMaster1.xml, one ppt/notesSlides/notesSlideN.xml per slide that has notes, and ppt/handoutMasters/handoutMaster1.xml. A deck with no notes has no notesSlides folder at all.
2. Set up the notes master. View > Notes Master. It carries six placeholders: Header, Date, Slide Image, Notes Body, Footer and Slide Number. Fix these once:
- Notes body type size. The default is small and the default typeface is not the brand's. Set it to the body font at 11–12 pt, left aligned, with real line spacing. A presenter reading from a lectern needs it legible.
- The slide image placeholder. Shrink it if the notes matter more than the thumbnail; a half-page thumbnail with a third of a page of notes is the usual failure.
- Header and footer. These do propagate to every notes page. Put the deck name and the date rule here.
The one thing that does not propagate: text typed into the notes body placeholder on the master. The master sets that placeholder's formatting and position, not its content.
3. Write notes into the right place. View > Notes (or the Notes button on the status bar) opens the pane under the slide; View > Notes Page opens the full page, which is what actually prints. Notes typed as a text box dragged onto a notes page are not notes — they will not appear in Presenter View and will not export with Publish what: Notes Pages. Type into the placeholder.
4. Set up the handout master. View > Handout Master. Its Slides Per Page dropdown offers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9 slides, plus Slide Outline. Be clear about what this master controls and what it does not: it owns the Header, Footer, Date and Page Number placeholders and the page orientation, and nothing else. The thumbnail grid is generated by the slides-per-page choice; you cannot move, resize or restyle the thumbnails from here. If the leave-behind needs a designed layout, it is a document, not a handout — build it as slides at A4 and print full-page.
Choose slides per page by purpose, not by paper economy: 3 per page is the working default because it is the only layout that puts ruled note lines beside each slide; 2 per page for a leave-behind people will actually read; 6 or 9 only for a reference index. Nine 16:9 thumbnails on A4 render body text at roughly two points — treat that layout as an index, never as a document.
5. Print. File > Print, then the second dropdown (labelled Full Page Slides by default) contains both routes: Print Layout (Full Page Slides, Notes Pages, Outline) and Handouts (the six densities, Horizontal or Vertical ordering). Set Frame Slides on for handouts so a white slide has an edge on white paper, and Scale to Fit Paper on when slide size and paper size differ. Print greyscale drafts in Grayscale, not Pure Black and White, which flattens charts to solids.
6. Export to PDF, per audience. File > Export > Create PDF/XPS > Options (Windows), then Publish what: Slides for the screen version, Notes Pages for the speaker copy, Handouts with the slides-per-page for the leave-behind. Produce them as separate files with distinct names. One PDF cannot serve all three.
7. On Windows only, escalate to Word for a real document. File > Export > Create Handouts > Send to Microsoft Word offers Notes next to slides, Blank lines next to slides, Notes below slides, Blank lines below slides and Outline only, with Paste (static) or Paste link (updates with the deck). Use it when the leave-behind needs editable running text. There is no macOS equivalent.
8. Close the leaks before the deck goes out. Notes travel inside the .pptx. Internal pricing and "do not mention" lines have all reached clients this way. Before sending, run File > Info > Check for Issues > Inspect Document and remove Presentation Notes, plus Comments and Document Properties. Keep the master copy with notes intact and ship the inspected copy. Check the date and footer too: they sit on the masters and stay stale until edited.
9. Check Presenter View. Slide Show > Use Presenter View, or Alt+F5 to start it directly. Notes render there at their own size, adjustable with that view's text-size buttons and independent of the notes master, so walk the heaviest slides through it before the rehearsal.
Inputs
- The deck, and whether notes already exist.
- Who each artefact is for: presenter, room, client leave-behind, archive.
- Paper size and whether the handout prints colour or greyscale.
- Whether any notes are confidential.
Output format
- Notes master settings: body font and size, thumbnail size, header and footer text.
- Handout master settings: slides per page, orientation, header, footer, date, page number.
- A print or export recipe per audience, with the exact menu path and options.
- The confidentiality decision: notes shipped or stripped, and how.
- Any slide where the notes overflow the notes page and need cutting.
Example
Input: a 28-slide investment committee deck. The presenter needs a script, the committee gets a printed leave-behind, and the notes contain internal pricing.
Output:
- Notes master: body font 11 pt brand serif, thumbnail reduced to the top third, header "IC — Project Atlas", footer "Internal — not for distribution".
- Handout master: 3 slides per page, portrait, page numbers on, footer set to the meeting date.
- Presenter copy: PDF, Publish what = Notes Pages, printed single-sided.
- Committee copy: PDF, Publish what = Handouts, 3 per page, Frame Slides on.
- Confidentiality: internal pricing on slides 11–14 lives only in notes. Master copy kept; the distributed
.pptxwas run through Inspect Document with Presentation Notes and Comments removed, then re-checked by openingView > Notes Pageon slide 12. - Slides 6 and 19 have notes that overflow; cut to fit one page each.
