Convert to PDF guide
PowerPoint to PDF Without Speaker Notes
Updated
Short answer: Drop the PPT or PPTX into PowerPoint to PDF: you get one slide per page and the speaker notes are never included.
Speaker notes are often the last thing you want to send: reminders, candid comments, the numbers you were told not to share. A PDF of a deck should be the slides the audience saw, and nothing else.
Step by step
Step 1: Delete any slides you don't want in the handout, or note their numbers to remove after converting.
Step 2: Open PowerPoint to PDF and drop the deck.
Open PowerPoint to PDF(runs on our server)Step 3: Download the PDF and page through it.
Step 4: Remove any slides that shouldn't be there by typing their numbers into Delete pages.
Open Delete PDF pages(runs on your device)Step 5: For a printed handout, put several slides on each sheet.
Open Multiple pages per sheet(runs on your device)
Why this works, and what to watch for
PowerPoint to PDF converts the deck with LibreOffice and exports the slides only, one per page, at the deck's own slide size. Speaker notes aren't exported, so you don't need to strip them from the file first. The PPTX itself still contains them, so share the PDF, not the deck, if the notes are private.
PDF is a static format, so each slide is captured in its final state: every animation has played, and anything that appears on a click is visible. If a slide builds up a chart in stages, the PDF shows the finished chart. Transitions, video and audio are dropped; a slide with an embedded video shows its poster frame. If a slide relies on animations covering earlier content, check that page: everything may be stacked on top of each other.
Fonts matter more in slides than in documents, because decks often use display fonts. Microsoft's standard fonts are substituted with metric-compatible equivalents, so text keeps the same size and line breaks. Unusual custom fonts that aren't embedded in the deck may be replaced with a similar one; if a heading looks wrong, embed fonts when saving in PowerPoint (File → Options → Save → Embed fonts) and convert again.
Comments aren't exported either. Hidden slides are normally left out, but don't rely on that for anything confidential: to be certain a slide isn't included, delete it from the deck, or remove its page from the PDF with Delete pages, which runs in your browser and leaves the other pages untouched.
If the deck is too large to email, usually because of high-resolution photos, Compress PDF on Medium typically shrinks it a lot without affecting the slide text.