HP DesignJet Z6200 PowerPoint 4x4 Layout for a Macintosh

PowerPoint was designed to create on-screen presentations. It was not intended for poster design. However, you can easily modify PowerPoint presentations for poster format by using the 4x4 layout feature of the MacOS print system and PowerPoint's "Scale to Fit Paper" option. The following instructions show you how to create a PDF file for the large-format HP DesignJet Z6200 printer in 004 Smith Hall.

A typical PowerPoint slide has a 4x3 aspect ratio, matching typical screen resolutions of 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768. When you print these slides on US letter-size paper, you get one 10"x7.5" slide per page, centered on the 11"x8.5" paper. By changing the "printer" and "paper size" settings, and the order in which the slides are printed, you can properly arrange the slides to print as a 40"x30" PDF.

This document assumes that you are working in the Smith Hall Computing Site. You can use your own system instead by first preparing your Macintosh as directed in HP DesignJet Z6200 Poster Printing Instructions for a Macintosh.)

Creating a PDF file

For this example, you will choose only the printer and the paper size options to create a PDF file. The "document size" always remains the same size for the "on-screen show," namely 10"x7.5".

• Page Setup...
  1. From the File menu, select Page Setup. The displayed width and height must be in a 4 to 3 ratio, for example, Width: 10 and Height: 7.5.
  2. Click the Options button.
     1. For Format for:, select HP DesignJet Z6100.
     2. For Paper Size:, select 30" by 40".
     3. Click the OK button.
  3. Click the OK button.
• Print...
  1. From the File menu, select Print.
     
     1. For Printer:, select HP DesignJet Z6100.
     2. In the Copies & Pages section, make sure there are exactly 16 slides to be printed.
     3. In the Layout section, for Pages per Sheet:, select 16 and for the Layout Direction, click the third icon (down and then to the right):
  2. Click the PDF button and click Save As PDF.

  The resulting PDF file will be one page with the 16 selected slides. The slides will be arranged to be read column by column.