I use PowerPoint a lot in my lectures and have found a few tricks to use in preparing paper copies of the presentation for the students and myself to use during the actual lecture. 

For the instructor, I like to have a paper copy of each slide with the comments I have entered into the "notes" section of the slide.  Of course, during the slide show these notes will not show up on the screen.  When using PowerPoint, if you click on File, Print, and click on "notes pages" in the “Print What?” dropdown, you will print out one slide per page.  For me, this uses too much paper and space.  Instead I do the following in order to print out three slides per page with notes out to the side: 

• Click on “File” on the taskbar
• Click on “Send To”
• Click on “Microsoft Office Word”
• Click on "Notes next to slides"
• Click on “OK”. 

This will automatically enter the slides and notes into a Word table using three slides per page.  I can adjust the table columns as needed.  I usually have to make the notes column wider.  Then I just click on File, Print, and OK.  I usually do not save this file because it will be at least 10 times the size of the original PowerPoint.  If I want to print another copy, I just go back to the original PowerPoint and repeat the process. 

I like the students to have the "handouts" page that shows three slides per page with blank lines out to the side to write notes during class.  I also like them to access these notes online.  I could just post the PowerPoint itself online and let them print out the handouts from there.  I don't do this because the file is usually large and I don't want them to have access to the "notes".  I want them to be more active in actually taking notes in class.  So I do the following:

• Click on “File”
• Click on “Print”
• On the dialog box, click on “Printer name” dropdown
• Click on “Adobe PDF”. 
• On the “Print What” dropdown, click on “Handouts”
• On the “Slides per page” dropdown”, click on “3”
• Click on “OK”. 
• In new dialog box, enter file name to save to. 
• Click on “OK”.

This will create an Adobe PDF file with three slides per page with blank lines to the right of each to take notes on.  The file will be about one tenth the size of the original PowerPoint and easily accessible online.  The students will need Adobe Reader, but this is readily available for free.  However, to create the Adobe PDF, you will need Adobe Writer which can be obtained by calling the computer help desk (931-540-2650).