How can I make B/W PDFs?

Problem

When you create PDFs from PowerPoint using the Adobe PDFMaker toolbar buttons or menu item, the PDFs come out in color. If you need a pure B/W or grayscale printout, there doesn't seem to be any way of making one.

Solution

If you don't need hyperlinks converted to PDF format and the other nice things the PDFMaker tools do for you, you can do this:

• Open your PPT file in PowerPoint
• Choose File, Print from the main menu bar
• Choose the Acrobat Distiller printer (it may be called just "Adobe PDF Printer" or similar wording in later versions of Acrobat)
• Choose Grayscale or Pure B/W as you wish
• Print the file

If you need hyperlinks converted and so on, you'll need to use the Acrobat PDFMaker toolbar buttons or menu item. In that case:

• Choose Tools, Options from the main menu bar
• Click the Print tab
• Click "Use the following default print settings
• Choose B/W or Grayscale and any other default settings you wish to use
• Click OK
• If you want to make these settings the default for further printing from this PPT file, save the file first, then use PDFMaker to create your PDF. If you use PDFMaker without saving the PPT file first, your settings will be used once, then discarded.

For a much more flexible way to make PDFs from PowerPoint using Acrobat or several other PDF-making products, see Prep4PDF

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