3 Reasons Not to Use Your Slides as Handouts

Here are 3 reason why it's not usually a good idea to use your PowerPoint slides as handouts to your audience: 

1.  In order to make the handouts readable, you have to print no more than 2 to a page – which is a lot of ink, paper and expense to print. 

2.  Your slides should not contain all your information so using slides as handouts won't make much sense without your voiceover.  (If your slides do contain all your information, then why do we need you? You could just send everyone your slides to read themselves).


3. If you hand out all the slides, people tend to skip ahead which can interfere with the order in which you want to reveal information.


Instead, if you want to have a handout, here are some options for creating one that is separate from your slides: 
  • Include key ideas, tips or frequently asked questions.
  • Make it a worksheet that they can fill in.
  • Leave plenty of white space for them to write their own notes as they listen to yourc presentation.
  • Add your contact info on every page so they can contact you after the presentation if they’d like more information.