PowerPoint for Postersessions

Creat a PowerPoint for a Printed Poster

version Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, PC

 I. Page SetUp:

1. Click on File and then Page Set-Up. Fill out the form as follows

• Slides sized for Custom
• Width 48 x Height 36 inches (PowerPoint only allows up to 56 inches so if you want to use paper larger than that, design everything in half and print out at 200%.)
• Number of Slides: 1

II.  Format

• Under Format, click on Background. Click on the dropdown menu and More Color for a flat colot background.
• For a two color gradient, choose Fill Effects, Gradient, the dropdown menu at Color 1, More Colors, choose a color and then Apply. Continue as desired.

• Remove textboxes by clicking on their border and hitting the Delete key.

III. Grid and Guides:

• Click on View, Ruler and then View, Grid and guides. Check on the Display drawing guides and OK.

• Start out with two intersecting guides. Add multiple guides by clicking on one line with the Control Key to get a new guide which you drag to a new position.
• Position guides equidistantly to create as many columns as needed, usually four or five.

IV. Text:

• Click on Insert, and Text Box for the title in the top center. Type or paste in the title and then select it. Click on Format and Font. Ariel Black at 54 pt. is a good font to use.

• Click on Insert, and Text Box, putting in another textbox for a column, aligned to your guides.
• Open your original source powerpoint or other type of file. Copy and paste text into the text box of your poster, leaving spaces for images or graphs. Select the text and choose Format, Font, using 24 pt. font for 24 slides. Set the color to black.Check the box: Default for new object.

V. Charts (graphs) and Tables: (Graphs can't be copied and pasted and so should be converted and inserted as images.)

• Open your source powerpoint or other type of file and find the chart or table you want to copy..
• Double-click on the chart elements to bring up the properties box. Change chart background to white and the text to black and the border color as black.

• Save: Rightclick on the chart background and Save as Picture. Save this as a gif or tif file to your desktop. Or you may scan an original and save as an image.
• Open new PowerPoint and click on Insert, Picture and then choose From File. Search for your chart image and insert it.

VI. Print File

• Click on File, Print, and Scale to Fit paper type to print out an 8 by 10 page to test.