Poster Print on PowerPoint: 2 Ways!

Back to School 2015 is in full swing and many of us have been working hard in our classrooms. One of the great things about social media/blogs for teachers is that we can share all of our ideas. I've found that the online teacher community is always so willing to share and contribute ideas to help other teachers. It's awesome! So a few days ago I caught Mrs. Schroeder's periscope (her periscope handle is @schroedershenan) about how she poster prints clip art, etc. for her classroom. Her posters looked so great! Now she has a Mac and uses their equivalent program to Microsoft's PowerPoint. I believe it was KeyNote. I have a Dell (A very OLD Dell!) and thought there has to be a way to do this on PowerPoint! So I did some digging and was able to find 2 ways! Keep reading to find out how!

Ok, So I tried doing a periscope (my profile is @Bilingual_Adventures)  and my old, CRACKED cellphone wasn't being cooperative! Technology can suck sometimes. Anyway, in case you didn't catch it live or the replay OR you just thought the 'scope wasn't very good (which it wasn't!), I decided to blog about it with step by step pictures. I hope this helps you out as you get your classrooms ready for the new year.

Alright, so you have your PowerPoint open and are ready to print. Now this will work on PowerPoint ONLY if you printer has the option to tile/poster print. I can do this on my printer at home, but my printer at school won't (I'll get to the part on how to print if this is the case for you in a bit) so here is how to find out if you can do this.

Way One: On PowerPoint!

Click File at the top and then Print or you can click Control and then p. You should have a Printer Properties link somewhere on our screen. I have PowerPoint 2010 on Window 7. Your version of Windows or PowerPoint might be different so you might have to search around for it. Mine is closer to the top. The Printer Properties dialogue box will open.

Look for the Page Layout or Page Set Up tab. On my printer it says Multi-Page (on your printer it could possibly say Tile printing) so I check that box and it then has the options Pages per Sheet and Poster Printing. I click next to Poster Printing and then click on the arrows to choose how big you want the poster. In this case I wanted it 2x2 to make a total of 4 pages. If you click on settings it gives you a few more options to pick like adding cut marks, etc. Once you choose how you want the poster to look, you can click OK at the bottom. This will close the dialogue box and take you to the Print screen. From there you can click print and you're done!

Way Two: As a PDF!

So you tried this and your printer doesn't allow Poster/Tile print. No problem! I'll walk you through the steps to convert your PowerPoint file into a PDF file and poster print from there.

Click on File and then Save As. This will open up the Save As Dialogue box.

Towards the bottom, there is a Save as type Drop down menu. Click on it and find PDF. Click PDF. Change the name if you'd like, but you can leave it the same. This will not change your PowerPoint file. This will save this as a different copy and as a PDF file. Then click the Save button at the bottom.

Now here is my converted PDF file. I use Adobe Acrobat Reader for my PDF files. If you don't have Acrobat on your computer (Which I highly doubt because everyone uses it) just search for Adobe Acrobat Reader and you can find a free download. They do have a Pro version you can purchase, but the free version works just fine.

Next click File at the top and the Print.

This will open up the Print Dialogue Box. If you go to the middle you will see a Poster button. Click on it and the Poster options will appear. This is a little bit different because you have to type in the percentage of Tile Scale you want. To make it 4 sheets type in 200%. DO NOT CLICK THE ENTER BUTTON! This will start the printing process and you want to be able to preview it first to see if it's what you want. Instead after you type in the percentage you want click anywhere on the screen. This will show you a preview to the right of what it will look like. You can also check the Cut Marks option to be able to have a guide to cut when you're assembling. Once you are happy with it, click print at the bottom.

When assembling: I laminated my sheets first before cutting and taping the sheets together. But if your poster is smaller like say just 2 sheets you might be able to assemble and then laminate.

So there you have it! 2 ways to poster print. I hope this was as useful to you as it was for me. I already made my daily schedule and class rules into posters. I'm obsessed with it! You can view my finished class rules posters here on my instagram. Go ahead and follow while you're there! Please comment if you found this useful and what you printed using it. Now, back to cutting out my laminated stuff for my classroom!