How do I export EPS files from PowerPointTM?
- Load PowerPoint
- Configure the drawing area
Under "File"|"Page Setup...", change the width and height attributes of the page to match the desired settings for the exported EPS file (or at least get the aspect ratio correct).
- Create the content in PowerPoint
For example, you may wish to copy a figure over from Matlab and add some PowerPoint annotations to it. Alternatively, you may wish to use PowerPoint's drawing features themselves to create the file from scratch.
- Open the print dialog
Go to the "File"|"Print..." menu. In general, you do not want to use the print button on the toolbar right now because it will not open the dialog. Make sure that you have a PostScript printer selected.
- Check the "Print to file" option (see a picture)
- Open the printer "Properties" dialog (see a picture)
- Go to the "Advanced" options (see a picture)
- Set the page size to "PostScript Custom Page Size" (see a picture)
- Set the page dimensions
In the "Custom Page Size Dimensions" area, set the dimensions. You have a few options here:
- Set them to be the same as were used in step 2. Be forewarned that usually this does not work as you would expect. Portions of the figure may be clipped by your chosen printer's physical margins (If anyone knows how to create a virtual printer definition file, this problem could be alleviated). Additionally, your chosen printer often does not allow page sizes as small as your figure.
- If your printer driver does not allow the settings you desire, enter in values that will correspond to the proper aspect ratio. After configuring the rest of the printer settings, you will need to cancel out of the print dialog, reset your drawing area as in step 2 to correspond to the values here, and then go back to step 4.
- [Recommended] Set them to anything larger than the size used in step 2 plus the printer margins. When you import the graphic, you will need to calculate the cropping boundaries. The graphic will be centered on the printed page.
- Return to the "Advanced" options
Do this by clicking on the okay button to close the custom page size dialog.
- Set the PostScript Output Option to EPS (see a picture)
In the "Advanced" printer options dialog, go to the "Document Options" | "PostScript Options" | "PostScript Output Option" pull-down and select "Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)".
- Set the PostScript Language Level to 1
In the "Advanced" printer options dialog, go to the "Document Options" | "PostScript Options" | "PostScript Language Level" spinner and select "1". You may experiment with Level 2 if you wish. For usage in LaTeX documents with our current software, Level 1 is required.
- Modify any other applicable settings
For example, you may want to experiment with the print quality settings, etc. if your document contains any bitmapped graphics. For inclusion in LaTeX, the other options seem to be okay if left at their default values.
- Close the dialogs
Press "OK" to close down all of the dialogs. This should be done 3 times. When you close the final master "Print" dialog, a new window will pop up asking where you would like the EPS file to reside.
If in step 9, the printer forced you to scale your page size, press "Cancel" on the final "Print" dialog to abort the actual printing. Go back to step 2 and set the drawing area to the scaled values. Proceed from that point on.
- Save the EPS output
In general, you will want to set the "Save as type:" option to "All files (*.*)" to avoid requiring you to rename your ".prn" file as a ".eps" file. Go to the proper directory and save the result, remembering to include the ".eps" extension in the filename.