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How can I turn my Powerpoint presentation into a secure PDF?

We have been pitching a large corporate client on our marketing services for a while now, and and after putting a ton of time into a killer Powerpoint deck, they suddenly want to disseminate it to their staff before signing our contract. I'm not too sure about this, and am thinking that instead of just sending them the preso we could send them a secure PDF, ideally one that would prohibit them copying any data out or printing the content. Is that doable, and if so, how do we get our iMac to do it?


Dave's Answer:

Hmmm... that is a bit odd, now that you mention it. If you're pitching a client on your services, there's little reason why they would want to disseminate your pitch to the rest of the company unless it's some sort of üaut;ber-egalitarian firm, and few really are, once you look closely. I think you're right to be a bit curious and to take some steps to control how widely that information can be disseminated.

As you know, Adobe's PDF documents are a great choice, and give you lots of control over what the recipient can do with the information in a way that's portable across both the Mac and Windows. Heck, even the nerds in IT can read it even though they're running Linux-based netbooks. :-)

To get a PDF from Microsoft PowerPoint, however, is a bit of a trick because while PowerPoint can save your presentation in a lot of different formats, as you can see here:

powerpoint save as file formats

what it can't do is save your presentation as a PDF. That's kinda dumb, but I am guessing that it's a technology licensing issue more than anything else.

Instead you need to use the print to PDF feature of Mac OS X that's one of its killer capabilities. And it's easy too... just choose "File" --> "Print":

powerpoint file print

Once you get to the print dialog window, however, don't choose "Okay" but instead click on the "PDF" button on the lower left corner:

powerpoint file print save as pdf

As you can see, there are lots of interesting things you can do here, but we'll just choose "Save As PDF...", which brings us here:

powerpoint file print save as pdf 2

If you just want to send a regular PDF without any constraints, this is far enough: give it a good name, click "Save" and you're done.

Since you want to add some security features, however, click on "Security Options":

powerpoint file print save as pdf password

For the document I was saving as I did this process, I didn't want to have a password to prevent it being opened, but instead one that made it difficult to copy or print, just as you seek. Here's how I configured that:

powerpoint file print save as pdf password 2

Finally, at this point, I clicked on "OK" then "Save" on the print window that I returned to, and got to watch PowerPoint work on the problem...

powerpoint file print save as pdf processing

Not more than a few seconds later I'm done and the document is created and ready to disseminate.

To test it, I opened it up in Preview and tried to print it:

preview cannot print password

Exactly as I would hope, and exactly what you need too.

Good luck with that client, too!


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Categorized: Business and Management , Mac OS X Help   (Article 9053, Written by )
Tagged: apple preview, creating pdf documents, mac os x, microsoft powerpoint, secure pdf
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Reader Comments To Date: 7

Sam said, on August 26, 2009 10:25 PM:

And for windows users you can also use an online converter such as www.convert-doc.com to convert powerpoint to pdf.

Rajib Ghosh said, on August 26, 2009 10:46 PM:

On Windows, you can use the excellent Open Source program "PDF Creator" to print any type of document into a PDF.

PDF Creator supports open, print & annotate passwords but does not support Digital Signatures. Another freeware PDF printer PDF995 does that (but it is a little clumsy IMHO).

Do remember that PDF security is not fool proof and can be removed by a determined System Admin.

I suggest that you embed copyright notices liberally throughout the document (particularly in images, charts) and digitally sign the document to prevent any kind of modification.

Joe Spaghettio said, on August 27, 2009 2:24 PM:

Hey Dave,

Just thought that I would let you know that in your first picture where it shows what you can save your PowerPoint to, PDF is listen at the bottom under Common Formats. Just thought I would point that out.

Joe

Dave Taylor said, on August 28, 2009 7:34 AM:

Oh, D'Oh! Thanks for that note, Joe. Yeah, that'd probably be a tiny bit easier as a solution! :-)

GuruBob's Blog said, on January 21, 2010 5:04 PM:

Maybe you should just use a Mac. All applications can print to a PDF natively on a Mac :)

Tuna said, on July 28, 2010 4:16 AM:

Maybe you should just use a Mac. All applications can print to a PDF natively on a Mac ... :D

Alican said, on August 13, 2010 11:47 PM:

Oh, D'Oh! Thanks for that note, Joe. Yeah, that'd probably be a tiny bit easier as a solution! :-)

Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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