Greta Williams has a large PowerPoint slideshow which weighs about 26MB and he is looking for ways to compress the PowerPoint file and share it as an email attachment.

Before finding methods to resolve this problem, it is essential to know why PowerPoint file size would grow so large and then take actions to compress it. Through analysis, we find that one obvious reason is that there are many high-resolution images and photographs in the presentation.

Regarding this problem, the following paragraphs will list some tips to help reduce the size of PowerPoint presentations.

1. Use compressed graphics file formats to reduce the size of PowerPoint There may be many images in graphic formats like bitmap (.bmp) in your PowerPoint presentation. The suggestion is to open bitmap image with a program that converts images and save the image in one of the following graphic file formats: jpg, gif, tif, wmf. Once your image has been saved under another format, you can reinsert it into your slide. If you do this for all your images, your presentation will be much smaller and it will run smoothly and fast.

2. Save your presentation a second time to reduce the size of PowerPoint Open your presentation, go to File (2003)/Office Button (2007) >> Save As… and give it another name. Then click “Save”.Doing this you will have a second presentation that often is smaller than the original copy. This is because PowerPoint usually stores lots of redundant information such as earlier drafts and previous used images. Once you save it as another file, the unnecessary redundant information would be purged.

3. Choose E-mail (96 ppi) output to reduce the size of PowerPointPicture Tools >>Format >> Compress Pictures >> Options >> Target Output >> E-mail (96 ppi)

(For PowerPoint XP and 2003, right-clicking the image >>Format Picture >> Compress >> Web/Screen) This would change all the pictures used in your presentation to an optimal size.

4. Insert a hyperlink instead of inserting an object to reduce the size of PowerPoint When you insert an image, you have the option to insert it either as an embedded object or as a linked file. By inserting it as a linked file means it will not become a part of the final presentation file. But you should always make sure that the linked file is with you and in the computer where you will run the presentation. Otherwise, the hyperlink won’t be working.
Insert >> Picture >> From File >> Select the image you want to insert >> Click the little down arrow besides Insert >> Link to File

The tips above are only the basic steps for reducing the size of a PowerPoint. In tip4, hyperlinks wouldn’t work if the computer where the presentation will be played is not connected to Internet, thus lots of inconvenient you may confront with.

In order to quickly and effectively compress your presentation to a minimum, converting the PowerPoint presentation to video with a third-party tool such as Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter will be a good choice. And it is especially suitable for the presentations that contain lots of pictures. By doing so, the file size could be reduced to up to 90%.

Besides the advantage of reducing file size, converting your PowerPoint presentation to video also has many other benefits:
1. Enable you to view your PowerPoint presentations without the need of MS PowerPoint. Windows Media Player would be OK.
2. Podcast PowerPoint slide show to iTunes or your own blog for sharing.
3. Show your PowerPoint presentations on YouTube, Google Video, etc.
4. Review PowerPoint presentations on iPod/iPhone/Pocket PC.
5. Create mp4 video and view PowerPoint presentation on TV. About Acoolsoft PPT2Video Converter: It is an all-in-one PowerPoint to video converter. With only 3 clicks, you can convert PowerPoint presentations to video formats such as MPEG, AVI, MP4, WMV, MOV, 3GP with high quality.

Screenshots:

Recommended video settings:

Resolution: 640 * 480

Frame Rate: 20fps

After you have used the methods above, your PowerPoint presentation should now be light and more manageable. It’s now your time to share it with others and enjoy the fun that PowerPoint brings to you.