As Government contractors and employees, we all have to create a PowerPoint presentation at some point for various reasons. One of the major issues we each come across is that the file size is too big. This is a problem as most email has a size restriction, making it more difficult to send files to the proper people. Today we will look at some of the causes for large file sizes and go into a few methods to reduce the size.

Large file sizes can be caused by many things. The first thing that comes to mind is the amount of slides. Unfortunately we cannot always control this factor as the number of slides is necessary for a proper presentation. Other causes are large image files, hidden objects, the types of images used and the save settings.

Today we will go over hidden objects and large image files. A sample PowerPoint is available for download if you wish to follow along and see the effects as they are explained here.

reduce-file-size-example Right click and select Save As to your computer. I suggest that you save it in its own folder to find it easily.

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Hidden Objects

It is very easy for objects to accidently be inserted onto a slide without knowing it. It can be as easy as creating a text box without a background and border and forgetting to insert text into it, or creating a shape with the same settings. To determine if you have hidden objects you will simply have to Select All on the slide. Everything on the slide will have resize handles making them visible. Once you have selected everything, hold the Control key (Command on Mac) and click on the objects that you wish to keep. Then hit the Delete key to erase the hidden objects.

Let’s give this a try:

1. With the presentation open, select everything on the slide. To do this you can either go to the Edit menu and click on Select All, or hold down Control on your keyboard and press A. As you can see we now have everything selected and resize handles show up for everything, including the hidden objects. Fig 1.1
2. Now hold down the Control key on your keyboard and click on the objects that you wish to keep. In the sample file, we will be keeping the title, the main text box and the image on the right. Now only the objects we do not need are selected.
3. Press the Delete key on your keyboard and the objects disappear. Do not save yet. Fig 1.2
4. Open the folder that your file is saved in and take a look at the file size. This is the file size that we begin with. For the sample file, it should be approximately 1,273 KB.
5. Return to PowerPoint and save the file. When you return to the folder, you will see that the file size has now decreased to approximately 1,271 KB. Fig 1.3

For this example it does not seem to be much of a difference, but once you have many slides, it can make a very big difference.

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Large Image Files

The easiest method for inserting an image is to just insert the image and then resize it to the size necessary to fit on the slide. Unfortunately, this does not reduce the file size of the image, only the dimensions. These large files can contribute greatly to the large file size of your presentation. If you notice that an image has been reduced significantly, then it would be beneficial to reduce the dimensions of the image in an image editing program.

Graphic Designers would most likely use Adobe Photoshop or another high-end graphics program. Unfortunately not everyone has access to these types of programs. But there are other options for basic editing. For this example we will use Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Your computer should have some sort of basic editing program to be able to adjust colors, brightness, reduce red eye, crop and resize photos. This is what you can use. At a later date I will go into different photo editing programs and how to do basic editing with them.

1. Double click on the image to open the Format Picture window. Click on the Size tab. Here is what you want to look for: Fig 2.1
   1. The original size
   2. The current size
   3. The percentage of the original size
2. You will want to take note of the current size and the percentage. For this example we will be using the percentage. Reset the image and click OK to close the Format Picture window. You will notice that the image is now much bigger and falls off of the slide. This is the original size of the image. Fig 2.2
3. Right click on the image and click Save as Picture. Name the file and save into My Pictures as a JPEG (.jpg) (I will go into different image file types and which is better at a later date.)
4. Open Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Select the file that you just created from PowerPoint and select Resize from the Picture menu. Fig 2.3
5. On the right are options for resizing your image. Select Percentage of original width and height. Enter the percentage that you recorded earlier from PowerPoint. Click the OK button to apply the new size and save the file. At this point you can also crop the image and adjust the colors and brightness if you need to. Fig 2.4
6. Return to the PowerPoint file. Delete the larger image. Insert a Picture from file and navigate to the image you saved earlier in My Pictures. Fig 2.5
7. Once again, check the current file size before saving (1,271 KB). Then save the file and see how the file size decreases (96 KB). Fig 2.6

This is mostly helpful for images that have been reduced to approximately 70% or less of the original size. This method is sometimes helpful for images between 70% and 85% and rarely helpful for images between 85% and 100%. Sometimes a slight change in image size could result in a larger file size. I will go into this in more detail in a later article. Notice the difference in file size from the original image that was inserted and the file size of the image that was resized. Fig 2.7

These are just two methods for reducing your file size. Next time we will go over some other methods for reducing the file size of your PowerPoint presentations.

Part 2 >>