Powerpoint 2008 prints super sized PDF files

[Delugach]

I'm on Leopard, with Adobe CS3 installed, using either Save as PDF or
Acrobat's PDF 8.0 printer driver.

Yes, I know that PPT is already known for its bloated PDF's, but the
new version 12.0.0 is much worse. I used a 12-slide file, with just
text, no pictures, white background. Under PPT 2004 the PDF was 350KB,
with PPT 2008, the PDF size is 1.3MB. And that's just the beginning.
If I save the file as pptx (the native format), my PDF is around 80MB
(yes, that's eighty!). I have Adobe Acrobat, and its printer driver
does the same thing. Acrobat reports that around 90% of the PDF file
is "images". Interesting, since I have no images in the file at all,
and Acrobat seems to recognize and select the text on each slide.
Acrobat reports when optimizing "The PDF document contained image
masks that were not downsampled." It reduced 1.3MB down to 1.1MB
(whoopee!)

Just for my own curiosity, if I use Save to Postscript, I get about
1MB of .ps which Preview reduces to about 350KB, which is what the old
Powerpoint produced. So it seems to be strictly a PDF driver problem

I've not found any unusually large files using Word 2008, again
pointing to a PDF driver problem with Powerpoint 2008. Apparently, it
doesn't know how to make a PDF without creating enormous (or lots of)
images.

Harry

 

[alain]

just found a similar problem. I save my ppt files as black and white handouts (4 slides per sheet) and send that to my students before the class. Something that was saved to a 184kB file now saves to 4.6 MB. Jeez, can someone fix that?

 

[alain]

here's an update on my situation. Since I still have an iMac G4 at home running under Tiger, and with Office 2004 still installed, I saved my presentation to the for Office 2004 format, moved it to my iMac and opened it there. Then I saved it as pdf. Lemme see: Office 2004 manages to squeeze it to 148k, Office 2008 requires 5.8megs. I wonder who the genius is that thought this one up and why it was not caught during beta testing.

 

[Ed]

here's an update on my situation. Since I still have an iMac G4 at home running under Tiger, and with Office 2004 still installed, I saved my presentation to the for Office 2004 format, moved it to my iMac and opened it there.Then I saved it aspdf. Lemme see: Office 2004 manages to squeeze it to 148k, Office2008requires 5.8megs. I wonder who the genius is that thought this one up and why it was not caught during beta testing.

I've experienced the same problem. I tried to reduce the file size
using Adobe Acrobat, but that program could not hand these files.
Clearly this problem is just one more example for poor quality control
and Microsoft. You'd think that will 4 years Microsoft could do a
better job.

I'm using OS 10.5.2 on a Mac Pro.

Ed

 

[JAK3]

This program is a piece of garbage. I'm having the same problem with new Powerpoint creating enormous pdf files. Only way I've been able to solve is to open the ppt file in keynote, readjust graphics that get screwed up in the conversion, and then use keynote to pdf. If you don't have keynote, you can download neooffice (freeware), and take a similar tack. Once again, Microsoft releases programs full of bugs.