How to Add Notes to PowerPoint? 6 Easy Steps
(Note: This guide on how to add notes to PowerPoint is suitable for all PowePoint versions including Office 365.)
Powerpoint presentations are an essential part of any individual’s career as they have the power to make or break a good impression on your co-workers. For this very reason, presenting PowerPoint slides can become very hectic and stressful for most people.
As a result, people may tend to forget or struggle to remember the talking points of various slides, throughout the presentation. This will negatively affect the presenter’s confidence and worsen their anxiety, which starts a vicious cycle.
The key to overcoming this is to understand that it is perfectly natural to forget some talking points during a presentation. Not many of us have a strong memory like an elephant.
With that out of the way, let me introduce you to the notes feature in PowerPoint. This clever little feature solves this problem by allowing you to add notes to your slides. These notes are only visible to the presenter, and not to the audience. This way you can confidently present your slides without worrying about forgetting your talking points or other important data.
In this guide, I’ll show you how to add speaker notes to PowerPoint in 6 simple steps.
You’ll learn:
- How to Add Notes to PowerPoint?
- How to Present with the Speaker Notes Using the Presenter View?
- How to Print Speaker Notes in PowerPoint?
How to Add Notes to PowerPoint?
Adding speaker notes to your PowerPoint slides is very easy if you follow these steps:
- Open your PowerPoint presentation file.
- In the toolbar, click on the View tab and make sure that the Normal View is selected.
- Now, click on the slide where you want to add notes.
- Click on the text which says Click to Add Notes, located immediately below the slide. This area is called the Notes Pane. If you do not see this Notes Pane option, click on the Notes button located in the taskbar of the Powerpoint window.
- Enter your notes in the Notes Pane area. If your text exceeds the visible space of the Notes Pane, a scroll bar will appear. You can also expand the area by using the mouse’s double-headed pointer to drag the upper boundary of the Notes Pane.
- Repeat the same process for other slides where you need to add notes.
How to Present with the Speaker Notes Using the Presenter View?
By default, the presenter view gets turned on automatically if you start the slideshow, provided if you have already added notes to your slides and are connected to an external monitor.
But, in case it is not appearing, don’t panic. Start your slide show as usual and click on the small settings icon on the bottom left corner of the slideshow screen.
Then, click on the Show Presenter View option from the list. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Alt+F5 to instantly switch to the presenter view.
In the presenter view, your notes will appear in the proper order on the right-hand side of the window, right next to the main slide. You can increase or decrease the text size of the notes by clicking on the two small buttons just below the notes pane.
Please keep in mind that these notes will not appear to the audience if your computer is connected to a projector. However, it will appear as it is if you are directly sharing your screen online instead of using the Present Online option.
How to Print Speaker Notes in PowerPoint?
If you want, you can print these notes for personal use or distribute them to the audience or other team members.
To do this go to the File tab and click on the Print option. Alternatively, you can use the Ctrl+P shortcut.
In the Print dialogue box, go to Settings and select Notes Pages under the Print layout options.
Finally, modify other settings, set which slides to print, set the number of copies etc and print as usual.
Let’s Wrap-up
In this guide, I taught you how to add notes to PowerPoint. We hope you find this useful and make amazing presentations. If you have any questions about this, feel free to ask in the comments section. We are always happy to help!
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Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
