Getting Office 2007's Save as PDF Add-in in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows

Although PowerPoint 2007 and other Microsoft Office 2007 applications do have the capability to save their outputs as PDF, this option is not built in within PowerPoint or the other programs by default. PowerPoint itself helps you install the add-in for the first time you attempt to create a PDF, as we explain next. However, you can easily download a small add-in that makes it possible to save PDFs from within PowerPoint 2007.

Follow these steps to get Office 2007's Save as PDF Add-in for PowerPoint 2007:

1. Open PowerPoint, choose Office Button | Save As | Find add-ins for other file formats, as shown in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: Find add-ins for other file formats
2. This summons the relevant topic in PowerPoint Help window, as you can see in Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: PowerPoint Help window
3. If you don't see the relevant topics, type 'pdf addin' into the search box in the Help window, and choose the Print, share, and protect files in the PDF and XPS file formats option as shown in Figure 3.
   
   
   Figure 3: PDF add-in
4. This brings you to the same screen, as shown in Figure 2. Click the Install and Use the Save as PDF or XPS add-in from Microsoft option (refer to Figure 2).
   
   Note: The help is directly routed from Microsoft's site, the options might be a little different. Also, you'll need to be online for this to work.
5. Now click Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in for 2007 Microsoft Office programs (see Figure 5).
   
   
   Figure 5: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in for 2007 Microsoft Office programs
6. This brings up the Microsoft Download Center page for the add-in within your browser. Click the Download button to start the download, as shown in Figure 6.
   
   
   Figure 6: Microsoft Download Center
7. Once the installer is downloaded, run the setup routine and follow the instructions.
8. To confirm the add-in is installed or not, choose Office button | Save As | and you'll find the add-in PDF or XPS, as shown in Figure 7.
   
   
   Figure 7: PDF or XPS
9. Now you can start publishing your PowerPoint presentations to PDF or XPS. What is XPS? We'll cover that in another tutorial!

Problems with creating PDFs from PowerPoint? See our PDFs From PowerPoint Troubleshooting Issues page.