I'm looking for a way to output my PowerPoint notes alone, or a presentation without the metafile overhead. I need the slides plus the notes - or even a way to get the notes without anything else.

You'll need to have Microsoft Word installed on your system in addition to Microsoft PowerPoint for this trick to work:

1. Open your presentation and choose File Send to Microsoft (Office) Word.
   
   
2. Select the Notes next to slides option, and click OK.
   
   
3. Microsoft Word creates a table with slide thumbnails and notes. Delete the unnecessary column in the resulting Word table that includes the thumbnails - to do that, select the entire column, right-click and choose Delete Columns.
   
   
4. Choose Table Convert Table to Text... Choose your text separator (or choose a custom separator).

Saturday, April 08, 2006