Reduce size of a Word handout in PPT 2003

Reduce size of a Word handout in PPT 2003

If you want hand-outs you can send a PPT file to Word. File menu, Send to, Microsoft Office Word. You can choose between different styles, but it can take a lot of time and can crash from time to time. Many people complain about the enormous increase in size, which leaves you with a huge Word file. Something can be done about that though.

When you send to Word you can choose between pasting and paste linking to the PPT file.
If you want to keep the size limited choose paste link. That will in itself reduce the size considerably. But if you unlink the slides in Word (press the Alt+F9 combination to see the links) you will get a dramatically reduced file. To do so select the entire document in Word and press Ctrl+Shift+F9. Then save the document again.

I tested this with a PPT 2003 file of 1.9 Mb.
The paste option resulted in a file of 7.7 Mb.
The paste link option resulted in a file of 3.9 Mb
The unlinked Word document resulted in a file of 877 Kb.