PDFs from Mac PowerPoint

When you save PowerPoint files as PDFs from Windows PowerPoint, the resulting PDF files are fairly compact and they preserve the links in the PowerPoint file.

When you save (or export) PDFs from Mac PowerPoint, things aren't so ideal. For example:

PDF files saved from Mac PowerPoint are huge

Whether you File | Save As | PDF or File | Export | PDF from your Mac, the resulting PDFs are large.

Well, ok, huge. Sometimes many times the size of the PPTX file you started with.

There are a few possible workarounds:

• If you have Adobe Acrobat, use it rather than PowerPoint's own PDF features to make your PDFs. Work with Acrobat's settings to change the way it compresses images, etc. to minimize file size.
• Open the PDF in Preview, choose File | Export, click Quartz Filter pop-up menu and choose Reduce File Size.
  For more information about Preview see Compress a PDF in Preview on Mac on Apple's site.
• Use PowerPoint Online: (see the how-to steps below)

PDF files saved from Mac PowerPoint don't preserve hyperlinks

Use PowerPoint Online:

• Upload your presentation file to OneDrive or SharePoint
• Choose File | Download As | Download as PDF to save it in PDF format on your local hard drive.

PowerPoint Online and Windows PowerPoint generate PDFs the same way, so the file will probably be smaller and will preserve the hyperlinks (and accessibility tags) from your original PPTX file.

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