Printing multiple slides/pages per sheet (Power Point and PDF)

It's that time of year when students are busy printing out long PowerPoints from classes, in advance of first or second midterms.

One of the popular questions, as a result: "How do I print multiple slides per page?"

The solution is easy:

• Using the Office Button (upper lefthand corner), click Print. Under "Print What," choose Handouts. Under "Slides per page" select the number of slides you want to print on each page, and a horizontal or vertical sequence of slides on the page.

If the document is a PDF, here's how to print multiple pages on a single sheet:

• Click the printer icon on the Adobe Acrobat toolbar. Under "Page Scaling," choose "Multiple pages per sheet," and choose the multiple you wish.
  

PDF "text tool"

A student today came in with a dilemma: he needed to fill out an online application. He wanted to type it because his handwriting is "atrocious," but had been unable to figure out how to do so.

In case a similar question comes your way on a future desk watch, you can "unlock" the PDF by a couple of quick steps. First, download the PDF. Then reopen the document. The Adobe menu will display. Look under "Tools" for the "Typewriter" option and you can edit away!

It used to be that Lamont had two aging but still serviceable typewriters for public use in the Viewing Room on Level A. No more, however. They've been removed for other kinds of equipment (and probably because we no longer can get parts for them).

Microform Scanning Tip

What can you do if a patron has scanned microform images, but the PDF can't be opened in Adobe Acrobat?

The patron may have neglected to click "Stop Scanning" before closing the CapturePerfect window. If so, the files are not properly formatted and will not open. The user will have to re-scan the images and click "Stop Scanning" when finished. (Sometimes this error happens when CapturePerfect closes accidentally.) This tip has been added to the Microform Reader-Scanner page in our Reference wiki.

Making PDF Text Searchable

You can use Adobe Acrobat to recognize and search text in previously scanned documents that have already been converted to PDF.
Directions:
1. Open the scanned PDF.
2. Choose Document > OCR Text Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR.
3. In the "Recognize Text" dialog box, select an option under Pages.
(Optional) Click Edit to open the Recognize Text - Settings dialog box, and select the options you want to use. You may want to select a language other than English or specify a rate of downsample (i.e., resolution) higher than 600 dpi.

If you get an error message saying "This page contains renderable text," here's what to do next:
1. Save the PDF file as a TIF image.
2. Open the TIF file in Adobe.
3. Follow directions 1-3 above.