Equations not printing correctly in B&W or grayscale

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aghfor - 27 Jan 2005 22:29 GMT

Hello,

I frequetly use powerPoint to present my lectures and often have
formulas that I have typed into the Equation Editor in PowerPoint. If
I print a slide everthing works well. However, if I try to print out
any of the views (slide view, notes view, handouts view...) using
either the "Grayscale" or "Black and Whte " options in the pring box,
the equation gets garbeled and is completely unreadable. It kind of
looks like if you where making a xerox copy of some words while you are
sliding the content along as it copies (letters get thick and elongated
beyond recognition).

I have tried all the settings in the print dialog box, reinstalled MS
Office, reinstalled the printer driver, but it still is messed up. My
equipmet is a G5 imac, Office 2004, and a HP LaserJet 2430tn. By the
way all of the equipment is less than a month old.
Can anyone help me?

Thanks AGHFOR

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Bob Mathews - 28 Jan 2005 01:34 GMT

> I frequetly use powerPoint to present my lectures and
> often have formulas that I have typed into the Equation
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> in the pring box, the equation gets garbeled and is
> completely unreadable.

Aghfor, unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that. PPT
will normally print equations OK in slide view, or in Handouts
view, with no more than 2 slides to a page. Any more than that,
and it starts disassembling the equations. The best option is to
use MathType, the professional version of Equation Editor.
Inserted into PPT normally, MathType equations do the same thing
as what you describe, but MathType will let you save the
equations as GIFs. When I need to create handouts with 3 or more
slides per page, I create 384 dpi GIFs out of the equations, then
re-size them in PPT to 25% of their original size. (But I use a
PC. On a Mac, you should create 288 dpi GIFs.) They print great
using this method.

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aghfor - 28 Jan 2005 13:19 GMT

Hmm... Was this an "improvement" in the latest edition of Office
(Office 2004 for Mac). Before I got all the new equipment, I was using
a PoweMac G4, Office X, and an HP LaserJet 2100tn. I had no problem
printing out the quations in any view at any size. Is it a weakness of
Equation Editor not being compatible with powerPoint or PowerPoint not
being compatible with Equation Editor?

I hate to spend any more money that I already have for "newer and
better" equipment if I don't have too. How do you know what resolution
to save the GIFFS?

Thanks

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Bob Mathews - 28 Jan 2005 18:41 GMT

> Hmm... Was this an "improvement" in the latest edition
> of Office (Office 2004 for Mac). Before I got all the new
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> powerPoint or PowerPoint not being compatible with
> Equation Editor?

I'm not totally sure where the "blame" lies, or if that's even
the right word. I just know this has been something we've had to
deal with in Windows versions of PPT going back at least to
Office 2000 (3 versions ago).

Actually, I just tried it with both PPT X and PPT 2004, and was
quite surprised to see the equations print normally when I print
the slides 6 to a page. They definitely would not print that way
on a PC. Maybe we should start over. I'll take a look at one of
your files if you want to send me an example privately -- not to
the newsgroup.

> How do you know what resolution to save the GIFFS?

There's no magic number. I chose 384 dpi (288 for Mac) because
it's an even multiple of the normal resolution for a monitor (96
dpi for Windows; 72 dpi for Mac). That way there's no guesswork
when resizing it in PPT -- just scale it down to 25% of the
normal size. Also, these settings provide decent print quality,
where a lower dpi GIF wouldn't. A higher dpi GIF would make for a
much larger PPT file without providing a corresponding
incremental increase in print quality.

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Mac Forum / Applications / PowerPoint / January 2005

Equations not printing correctly in B&W or grayscale