PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: How to Save As PDF and Hide Hidden slides? I'm using Microsoft PowerPoint 2011 on a Mac. When I use "Save As..." and choose PDF format, I would like a PDF that has all the slides except for slides marked as Hidden in my slide deck. But I always get all slides in the PDF.

This is a problem, of course, because hidden slides are hidden because they aren't ready for public viewing.

I would think there should be an option to suppress hidden slides, but I can't find one. My colleagues who use Windows do seem to have the option on MS PowerPoint for Windows.

It is possible to suppress hidden slides during Print... but then I am at the mercy of print formatting, and the PDF contains print margins that I can't suppress.

Has anyone found a solution for this?



Solution:

There appears to be no way to make "Save As PDF" skip hidden slides on the Mac version of Powerpoint.

So the workaround is to use Print instead, and print to PDF within that dialog. One can fix the margin issue this way:


Open the Print dialog.
Click Page Setup... to choose a paper size.
Change the Width and Height to match the full width and height of the paper you choose. For example, if you select Letter size, the default width and height are 10" x 7.5", so change it to be 11" x 8.5".
Now one can print to paper or print to PDF and get the full bleed, and hidden slides stay hidden.
Instead of Save As... PDF, Print->"Save as PDF".  You can get around the print margins by setting up a printer/presentation that has no margins, "full bleed". 

A few important steps:


First, go to File -> Page Setup and make sure that you've got the dimensions there identical for the default paper size in the printer.  In my case, it's 8.5 x 11 inches for Letter size paper.  Read the dialog box carefully, and select the option that lets you set a size larger than the printer will allow.
In the print dialog, make sure you do NOT have "scale to fit paper" checked.


You should now see that the print preview in the print dialog is edge to edge.