Printing from PowerPoint

[Graham H]

We have an issue printing Powerpoint slides whereby the font size is
increased when printed to a physical printer or even to PDF. To complicate
things, the slides are in Japanese (may not be relevant - font is
STFangsong). When I print the slides on my PC in London they work fine
(including PDF), but in the Tokyo office, the font size prints larger (on
numerous different printers and also in PDF). The configuration of the PCs
should be similar. I suspect it is a printer driver issue but having asked
the user to try different printers, they still have the same issue.

Is it possible to set the font to print differently in PowerPoint to that on
the screen? Any tips on what else I need to look for?

Office 2003 Professional
Windows XP Professional

 

[Rick Altman]

Graham, print issues are often squirrely, so we might have to come at this
with multiple passes. The first variable I would want to eliminate is that
of the default printer. In short, make sure that the printer you are
printing to is the one that Windows recognizes as the default. In other
words, when you press Ctrl+P, the desired printer should already be
selected.

If that is not the case, then you are composing slides with a different
print driver in place than the one you are ultimately using to print. This
was a much bigger deal a decade ago (I'm sure Steve R. has all sorts of
horror stories from days gone by), but nonetheless I have seen it with my
own eyes today how type moves depending upon the active print driver.

So let's isolate that variable: Make sure that the same printer is selected
as the default in both locations.

 

[Jean-Pierre Forestier [MVP[]

Is the True Type font embedded?

 

[Graham H]

Steve/Rick/Jean-Pierre,

Many thanks for your suggestions - I will follow up with the Tokyo office.
In answer to some of the points raised:

The font appears to be embedded into the presentation (I do not have it
installed on my PC). I can try "Print True Type fonts as objects" option in
PowerPoint.

The presentation looks fine in PowerPoint, it is only when it gets printed
(or print previewed) that the font size changes.

Will check the fonts installed on the Tokyo PCs

Further info, it is just one page of the presentation with this issue - it
is the only page with font sized 15 (may not be relevant), but there are a
number of other pages where this font is used in this presentation, and they
are not affected.

Tokyo are in bed at the moment, so I will follow up early next week.

Many thanks for your help.

 

[Graham H]

Thanks - will give this a go too.

G.

In that case, perform the same Format | Replace Fonts and look for question mark
icon test on your own PC. You might be seeing substitution on your end as well.


Ah. Sometimes slides just get corrupted and one sign of this is font substitutions
that happen only on printouts and/or exported images. The slides look fine on
screen/in slideshows.

I've never found a way to fix this particular problem other than deleting and re-
creating the slide. I'd suggest that you do that and put other diagnostic efforts
on hold until you find out whether that fixes the problem.

- it