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I have a PowerPoint presentation where I extensively use simple animations, only appear/disappear effects triggered by the mouse (not time based), without any smooth transitions.

Is it possible to export a PDF where every single step of the animation is on a separate slide?. The problem is that, exporting through the save-as menu, each slide in the pdf is just a snapshot of the corresponding powerpoint slide (with everything visible).

Example: Suppose I have the following slide that start visualizing the shape [A]:

[A]

clicking the mouse or pressing the right arrow triggers the 'appear' event for the shape [B]:

[A] -> [B]

clicking the mouse or pressing the right arrow triggers the 'disappear' event for the shape [A]:

       [B]

The PDF exported file of this PowerPoint animation will have a single slide with [A] -> [B], while I would like to have three separate slides.

slhck
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mrucci
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3 Answers3

100

Converting a PPT to a PDF while maintaining the animation steps is something I too have been looking into for a long while, without finding a satisfactory solution.

That is why I have decided to write an add-in on my own which does exactly this:

  • splits the slides at each animation step (being it mouse-triggered or not depends on the user's choice)
  • while modifying (adding, deleting, altering) the shapes in the "fragmented slide" according to the animation effects.

If you are interested, I have packaged the add-in in an easy-to-use installer, which adds a toolbar (or tab, if you are using Office 2007) to your PowerPoint. In case you are not satisfied, you can easily remove the add-in using the standard Control Panel "Add/Remove Applications" tool.

You can get PPspliT here. Examples of usage are also provided.

logi-kal
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0

Summary

This macro code works, and it also inserts the original slide number in the top left corner of each slide: https://gist.github.com/pcmoritz/4b0e1be7f2dfcc4e51e2ace50426f67d

Details

This is a method that worked in April 2025 with the Microsoft 365 (subscription) version of Powerpoint. I figured it out by following the links in this comment. This answer includes how to keep the original slide-numbers.

For full information, start by reading these two pages by Neil Mitchell: https://web.archive.org/web/20231004191351/https://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2007/11/creating-pdf-from-powerpoint-with.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231004194728/https://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2007/11/powerpoint-pdf-part-2.html

At the bottom of the second page are some comments where people point out a problem with Neil Mitchell's macro if each slide shows a slide-number. Each new slide has a new number, so if slide 10 in the original has two animations then it might become slides 10 to 12 in the new version. Then there is a comment by Philipp Moritz:

Here is how you can use this code and retain the slide numbers from the old presentation:

https://gist.github.com/pcmoritz/4b0e1be7f2dfcc4e51e2ace50426f67d

You need to deactivate the slide numbers, this will insert a text box per slide with the right number from the old slide.

In other words, the code on the github page is based on the code on the neilmitchell page, but it retains the slide numbers from the original presentation, by inserting the original slide-numbers as hard-coded numbers near the top left corner of each slide. As well as running the macro, you also need to delete the conventional slide numbers yourself - these appear on a master slide as <#>.

If you want to change the position, font, etc of the "slide numbers" you would probably need to change something in these lines in the macro:

Set oshp = .AddTextbox(msoTextOrientationHorizontal, 10, 10, 100, 50)
oshp.TextFrame.TextRange.Font.Name = "Arial"
oshp.TextFrame.TextRange.Font.Size = 12
oshp.TextFrame.TextRange.InsertAfter "" & i
user1310503
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0

One thing you can do is to create a slide before every change in the animation, that way you can export it to pdf.

another option can be to run through the animation and take screen shots at regular intervals and then store them together.

Third option can be to write a macro using vba where using the macro you can run the animation within the slide and at each change in the animation you can copy the current slide to a new slide and then save all as pdf.May i know if you have to press a key/mousecick or each single step is automatic transition?

Anirudh Goel
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