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Preparing your Images in PowerPoint

Many images, including those scanned on flatbed scanners or slide scanners and from digital cameras, can be too large for PowerPoint presentations. The large file sizes can cause your presentation or even the entire computer to crash when you are presenting.

Although there are several ways to reduce the file sizes of your images, this method is an easy way to work with all of your files within PowerPoint. By following these steps you will be less likely to run into problems during your presentation.

To insert images into PowerPoint

  1. Open your PowerPoint presentation.
  2. From the Insert menu choose Picture > From File...
  3. Browse to your image, select it and click Insert.
  4. If the image dimensions need to be *slightly* increased or decreased you can do this by dragging the corners of the image on the slide while holding down the SHIFT key to keep the image proportional. This does NOT resize the original image, and does nothing to change the file size.

To process your images in PowerPoint

1. After inserting your image to your PowerPoint presentation, go to Format menu and choose Picture.
2. In the Format Picture window, click Compress...
3. Under Apply to make sure to clarify if you would like to adjust Selected pictures or All pictures in document.
4. After you decide what to compress, under Change Resolution adjust the resolution by clicking Web/Screen.
5. Make sure Compress pictures is checked.
6. Click OK.

A final size check

Although different computers will be able to display larger presentations, a safe rule of thumb is to make sure that your entire PowerPoint presentation does not exceed 40MB. To check the size of your presentation

On a Mac
  1. Quit out of PowerPoint.
  2. Click once on the icon for your PowerPoint presentation to select it.
  3. From the File menu choose Get Info > General Information
  4. In the window that appears look for the Size of the presentation
  5. 40,000K = 40MB
On a PC
  1. Quit out of PowerPoint.
  2. Right-Click on the icon for your PowerPoint presentation.
  3. In the menu that appears, choose Properties.
  4. In the window that appears look for the Size of the presentation.
  5. 40,000KB = 40MB

If your presentation is larger than 40MB and you do not want to reduce its size by decreasing the dimensions of your images or removing images, take your presentation to the computer that you will be presenting on and run through the entire presentation. If the presentation is slow to respond, displays empty boxes instead of the images or crashes either PowerPoint or the computer, you will have to reduce the image file sizes or the number of images in order for the presentation to run.

Remember to test your presentation on the actual computer that you will be presenting on. Because different computers may be able to handle larger presentations, testing on another computer may give you inaccurate results.