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You are here: Home / Content / Export all presentation text

Export all presentation text

August 20, 2003 by Ellen Finkelstein 40 Comments

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Have you ever wanted to export all of the text in a presentation? There are several reasons for doing this:

* To repurpose the text to a report or other document
* To give a presentation a makeover, starting with just the text
* To use as notes during delivery

If all of your text is in text placeholders

If, and only if, all of the text is in text placeholders, this is an easy task:

  • In PowerPoint 2003, choose File>Send To>Microsoft Office Word.
  • In PowerPoint 2007, choose Application button> Publish> Create Handouts in Microsoft Office Word.
  • In PowerPoint 2010, choose File> Save & Send> Create Handouts> Create Handouts.
  • In PowerPoint 2013 and later, choose File> Export, Create Handouts, then click the Create Handouts button.

In the dialog box that opens, choose the Outline Only option and click OK. Word opens with your text. You can now reformat it in any way you want.

If you have text in text boxes and shapes

But what if you have text in text boxes and shapes? You may need this text as well. In fact, this may be just the text that you’re trying to reformat.

First, look at my dummy presentation, which I created with labels to help me troubleshoot any problems.

dummy presentation

dummy presentation

The solution involves converting the presentation to a PDF file and then extracting the text from the PDF. Here are the steps:

  1. In your presentation, choose File> Print. Choose Microsoft Print to PDF or another PDR driver. (Other options are Adobe Acrobat, PDF 995, PrimoPDF and others.) Save the file. Adobe Reader opens with your new PDF file.
new PDF file in Adobe Reader 7.0

new PDF file in Adobe Reader 7.0

2. Do one of the following:

  • Choose File> Save as Text or Save as Other> Text to create a text file (.txt) from the PDF. This will extract all of the text in the document. However, you may have some unusual characters that you need to delete. (Look at the 2 small boxes in the text below.)
text file from the PDF

text file from the PDF

  • Press Ctrl + A to select everything.  If that doesn’t work, choose View> Page Display> Enable Scrolling, double-click at the top, and drag downward until everything is selected. (For some reason, this is slow.) With the entire document selected, copy to the Clipboard. Open Notepad, and paste. You can see the result below. It’s very clean.
result in Notepad

result in Notepad

I’d be interested to hear in your results. Leave a comment!

“101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know” is for everyone who never took a course or read a book about PowerPoint! These tips will fill in the gaps, speed up your work, make presentations easier, and help you get better results. Now updated through PowerPoint 2016 and Office 365. Learn more at http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/101-tips/

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READ LATER - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> CLICK HERE <<

Related posts:

  1. Export the text in a presentation
  2. Making great PowerPoint handouts in Microsoft Word
  3. Import text from Word or Notepad
  4. Animate Text on Top of Text

Filed Under: Content, Delivery Tagged With: PowerPoint, presentations, text

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Export the text in a presentation « PowerPoint Tips Blog

[…] Would you like to export even text in text boxes? See my tip, “Export all presentation text.” […]

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11 years ago
Will McKenzie
Guest
Will McKenzie

Hi Ellen, thank you SO much for this tip on on how to extract the text from a powerpoint presentation.

The continuous trick will save me hundreds of hours. THANKS.

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10 years ago
Ellen
Guest
Ellen

Wow, that’s a lot of hours! I’m glad to help. If you haven’t signed up for my PowerPoint Tips Newsletter, I recommend it so you don’t miss new tips as they come out. There’s a sign-up button on every page.

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10 years ago
Simon H
Guest
Simon H

Do you know a way of exporting all the text from PowerPoint 2007 – but including the slide notes?
regards

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9 years ago
Will McKenzie
Guest
Will McKenzie

Hi Simon. I have just worked out that you can, from Powerpoint, ‘Send to’ the document to Word choosing ‘Notes below slides’. This creates a word document with each powerpoint slide on one page, with the notes typed out below. Then use Ellen’s technique of printing or saving the word document to a pdf. Set the pdf to ‘continuous’ view, ‘Select All’, copy and then paste into Notepad, then ‘Edit’ ‘Select All’ and paste into Word. Phew. This method includes the text ‘slide 1’, ‘slide 2’ e.t.c. which can be useful.

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9 years ago
Jonesy
Guest
Jonesy

So, I just wanted to leave the method that I just discovered. None of the options I read online worked for me since all the text in my presentation was white on black and it was ALL textbox text. And when I tried the above methods the best I got was a giant block of text that had no spaces and was improperly interpreted and was basically just a mess. So here’s what I did: Dragged the pptx file to my Google Drive. I made sure that the convert to Google Docs checkbox WAS SELECTED. Once the presentation had been… Read more »

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9 years ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Guest
Ellen Finkelstein

That’s a great tip. Thanks for sharing it! I often see presentations that were created solely with text boxes and they are almost always a mess.

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9 years ago
Ann T
Guest
Ann T

Wonderful tip! Ir’s amazing what you can hack with Google docs!

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9 years ago
John W
Guest
John W

thanks so much for this tip…you have saved me sooo much time!
To expand on your method for selecting the ‘clean’ text in the PDF by scrolling down, you can start selecting and then use the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+END to select to the end without having to slowly scroll through the whole lot.

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9 years ago
Rick
Guest
Rick

Thanks Ellen and Jonesy. The Google Docs tip is wonderful and exactly what I needed! Isn’t it peculiar that select all, copy, paste of these textboxes isn’t natively functional in Office? Boggles the mind 😀 Should be a Paste Special option.

Thanks again! I’ll be telling all my friends 🙂

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9 years ago
Brian Hunt
Guest
Brian Hunt

Great, simple tip 🙂 I used the original export to pdf then save to word version which worked find and saved me days of work. I’ve not tried the google drive version – I’m on a client site with restricted internet access.

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8 years ago
Pat Toura
Guest
Pat Toura

Hi,

I hope to keep the outline formating in Word. My text is not in “text boxes” but “save as” and “publish to” both corrupt the formatting a little bit and in different ways. Copy and paste of the outline also corrupts the formatting (maybe a 3rd version, not sure).

Why not keep in ppt and print the outline from there?: I wanted to get access to move the margins and insert some spaces (and possibly insert some new notes that don’t necessarily need to go into the ppt doc). Thank you for any suggestions.

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8 years ago
Faisal Jan
Guest
Faisal Jan

thanks for the hint… had saved me a lot of time.

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8 years ago
Margo Putzeys
Guest
Margo Putzeys

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!

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8 years ago
Amy
Guest
Amy

Hi,
Thanks for this tip, is very useful! But I have a problem because I have a Mac, not a PC with Windows, so I can’t download PDF995. Is there any option to do this with Mac?
Tank you so much!!

Vote Up0Vote Down 
8 years ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Guest
Ellen Finkelstein

Amy, there are definitely programs for the Mac that can create PDF files. And you can probably save the presentation to a PDF format from within PowerPoint.

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8 years ago
Ahmed
Guest
Ahmed

Thank you very much for your help !
You’re a great person , you’ve saved me a lot of time .

Vote Up0Vote Down 
7 years ago
Stephen
Guest
Stephen

Hi thanks for this, looking at PDF995 is a windows based application, I use a MAC and have Adobe Acrobat installed can I use this instead? Also I have included different quiz’s in my presentation and this is working fine. My next step is to make the boxes mandatory, in other words they will not be able to progress to the next slide until they select the correct answer, and then link them to a final report based on how many attempts they took to get it right and then print a summary of quiz and score. How do I… Read more »

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7 years ago
Akson
Guest
Akson

Sorry, it does not work for Arabic/Persian language texts.

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7 years ago
Domas
Guest
Domas

Wooow thank you. It helped me so much

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7 years ago
Louise
Guest
Louise

Thank you – I’ve tried (& failed) a few times to find a way to do this, since they introduced this type of text box. This is a simple and effective work around.

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6 years ago
Mary
Guest
Mary

Thank you soooo much, it really helped me out.

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6 years ago
Linda Moore
Guest
Linda Moore

I have more notes under my slide than will fit in the note box, even when enlarged. Is there any way I can still submit the presentation to my on-line college and include all the text? I also have to submit it to Turnitin prior to submission to the college.

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5 years ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Guest
Ellen Finkelstein

Can you submit in any format? You can export it to a Word handout and put as much text in as you want. I have instructions at http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/making-great-handouts/.

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5 years ago
Linda
Guest
Linda

Unfortunately I have to turn it in as a power point presentation on line to the university. Is there a way I can do that with all of the text included..

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5 years ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Guest
Ellen Finkelstein

I would then just split the slides up so there’s less text in the Notes pane for each slide.

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5 years ago
Elaine
Guest
Elaine

Hello. Thanks for all the handy information here. I have a PowerPoint presentation (lots of text boxes) that I need to turn into a Word manual. Very daunting. But I followed the instructions from Jonesy (2013) to upload it as a Google Doc (didn’t even know about that before) and download it as a simple text doc for Note Pad. It came out as very raw text with very basic formatting (periods mostly). Good enough to get me started without having to retype everything. But the nice surprise was when I copied the raw Note Pad text to Word: it… Read more »

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5 years ago
Niels
Guest
Niels

I have a somewhat related question: I can print a PPTX to PDF as a notes page. The problem is that the content of the slide itself is becomes an image and is therefore not searchable. I can also save as PDF (presumably through an acrobat plugin or something) – then I get only the slides, not the notes, but the slides are searchable. I cannot find a way to make the whole thing in one: slides with notes in PDF format where the entire thing is searchable. Any hints?

Niels

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5 years ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Guest
Ellen Finkelstein

You can print notes pages to a PDF using a PDF driver. You might need an Acrobat plugin but my Windows system includes one. And it’s searchable. File, Print. Choose Notes Pages in place of the default Full Page Slides. Then choose the PDF driver from the list of printers.
Another option is to save to Word. You can choose a layout that includes the notes. See http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/making-great-handouts/.

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5 years ago
Niels
Guest
Niels

Thank you for this. Whenever I do the first of these options, I get only the notes to be searchable, not the slide section. I am doing this on a Win10 system with office 2016 and acrobat pro. For the second option, I have not explored that a whole lot yet. One thing I immediately notice is that the slide seems a bit small compared to other ways to produce something similar. Can the size of the slide portions be adjusted using a setting in some type of master? I would like the slide to take up more of the… Read more »

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5 years ago
Mark Kamoski
Guest
Mark Kamoski

Bravo. I just ready 4 articles that claimed (but ultimately failed) to do what you have done here. Thanks. — Mark Kamoski

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3 years ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Guest
Ellen Finkelstein

Mark, Glad it worked for you! It took me quite a while to figure it out.

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3 years ago
Jessica
Guest
Jessica

Ellen, thank you so much for this hack. I have about 3,000 text boxes that would otherwise have to be extracted one by one. Whew! I now am faced with the issue of importing these texts into an excel document. Is this doable?

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3 years ago
Ameya Gokhale
Guest
Ameya Gokhale

big thank you ! everything worked well as described by you

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2 years ago
Manohar Lal
Guest
Manohar Lal

Hi, This blog is good. Thank you for sharing a piece of great information.

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1 year ago
Abhishek
Guest
Abhishek

Thanks for share.

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1 year ago
Tiziana Soverino
Guest
Tiziana Soverino

Hi Ellen, many thanks for sharing this! I followed the steps you outlined, and I managed to export all the text from a PowerPoint presentation. I had to try a couple of times, but I managed to do that in 15-20 minutes, by converting my PowerPoint presentation to a PDF, then clicking Ctrl+ A, selecting everything, copying the text t the Clipboard, and pasting it into a text document. That way, I saved hours of work! 🙂

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1 year ago
Ellen Finkelstein
Author
Ellen Finkelstein

So glad this helped you!

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1 year ago
trackback
How To Convert Google Slides To Pdf – pwroundtable

[…] Choose File> Save as Text or Save as Other> Text to create a text file (. txt) from the PDF. This will extract all of the text in the document. via […]

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1 year ago
sid khan
Guest
sid khan

Now powerpoint is having more features and the earlier version of PowerPoint. Lots of beautiful templates and designs can help you to make better presentations

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5 months ago
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