How to insert a PDF in PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has now been the go-to medium for preparing and delivering presentations for organizations across the globe. Its almost impossible to find a professional setting not dependent upon PowerPoint, and for good reason. Years after being introduced, PowerPoint still remains one of the most convenient ways of sharing data and information. In this article, we will be demonstrating how you can integrate a PDF into your PowerPoint presentation so as to make it more informative. PDF files help us document statistics and profiles of all kinds and putting them together in a PowerPoint PPT can really boost its presentability.

How to insert a PDF in PowerPoint presentation

There are two ways in which people can put PDFs in their PowerPoint presentations.

By putting pictures of PDF files on slides
By inserting a PDF as an object and using it as a support document

1] Insert pictures of your PDF

As the title suggests, herein you don’t insert your PDF directly into the presentation, but instead, take different snapshots of all the pages you feel are important. PowerPoint allows you to clip desktop screens internally. So, your PDF pages are inserted as pictures in the PowerPoint PPT. Here’s how you can do that:

Open the PDF you want to insert in your presentation and make sure it’s the last thing you open before opening PowerPoint
Turn on PowerPoint and access the tabs menu on the top
Here, click on the Insert tab and further select Screenshot
From the resultant drop-down, click on Screen Clipping which will take you to the last page you’d accessed before PowerPoint, in this case, your PDF
You’ll find the PDF greyed out with a crossed cursor, so drag it along the area that you want to put in the PDF
Stop dragging and your selected area will turn into a picture. This picture can then be formatted (resized, cropped, etc.) as per your needs

In case you’re at the wrong page upon clicking on Screen Clipping, press Esc to exit it.

2] Inset PDF as an object

An alternative to the aforementioned method which, although is common and easy can be very time taking, is to insert your PDF as an object in the PPT. Here’s how you can do that:

Firstly, make sure that the PDF you want to insert isn’t open on the desktop at the moment
Open PowerPoint and from the tabs, click on Insert. Further select Object
In the Insert Object dialog box, click on Create from file, browse your PDF file’s location and enter it. You can directly enter the path of your file in the address bar as well
Click on Ok and this PDF will become a part of your PPT

A drawback with this method is that you may experience a decrease in the file quality, and you can tackle that by opening the file in full by double-clicking on it. To make accessing this file easier, you can attach an action to it.

How to open your PDF in a PowerPoint slide show?

Assign an action to open a PDF file from your PowerPoint by following the steps below:

Open the slide containing your PDF file in normal view and visit the Insert tab. Here, select Action in the Links box
Configure the music click as you want and save it by clicking on Ok
Select Object action, and click on Open in the list.

How can I darken the print on PDFs?

If you feel like the text on your PDF files is too light to make sense of or you’re just generally looking for your PDFs to have a darker print, you can make the suitable changes on Adobe Acrobat.

Go to Edit > Preferences > General
Here, under the Accessibility tab, check what the Document color option says and switch it to Black
Go to File > Print and click on the Advanced button. Check the Print as Image box and try if it prints in a darker color

We hope this post was of help to you and that you were able to integrate PDFs into your PowerPoint presentation with ease.