Octopus Overlords

I have a Powerpoint file that is 16 MB. It has 3 slides with texts boxes, some pictures - nothing weird. I was asked to try and shrink the size, so I went through and replaced all the pictures with PNG. The size dropped to 15MB. I then deleted one slide - no change. Deleted a second slide - no change. Deleted the third slide and inserted a completely blank slide - still 15 MB. What could possibly be causing this file size?

I went and copied each individual slide to a brand new, fresh presentation and all 3 slides together were 800kb. So I got what I wanted, but what am I missing in the original file?

Do you have graphs/tables? The underlying data may have been embedded in the original.

I ran into something like that with a powerpoint deck I put together weekly for work. I was given the template that I have to use.

The new powerpoint (at least it was new to me) uses lots of funky layers. I had to make some tweaks to one of the lower layers to save for web, or something. Let me see if I can find the settings.

I can't speak for your file specifically, but I've seen people use a powerpoint frame from one presentation to another to another to another, eventually leaving a single empty powerpoint slide with nothing but a company logo and frame coloring taking up 100 megs.

I took that company logo and pasted in a new presentation colored the frame it too up less than a meg.

Also note powerpoint does a lot crazy stuff behind the scenes, like attempt to embed your font sets in hopes that they will translate to the next machine just in case that next machine doesn't have the exact font set, wherein if they save, it will import font information etc...

https://www.presentationpoint.com/blog/ ... entations/

So with ignorance, I say re-create the presentation from scratch. My opinion subject to change with more info.


Here are some suggestions if you want to deep dive and try to find the problem without starting from scratch

https://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ000 ... ut_it-.htm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:40 pm Do you have graphs/tables? The underlying data may have been embedded in the original.

I thought of that and converted all the tables to PNG - but from what I can tell, they were just pictures of tables to start with. They didn't launch Excel or any other program when I tried to edit them. And it wouldn't explain why deleting all the slides would still leave me with a 15 MB file.

I also checked for macros and there were none.

I've been Googling and apparently files just break sometimes? It doesn't say they break huge, but maybe?

The power point presentations I use are ~120 slides and around 50-70MB each, filled with all kinds of stuff. I can't imagine what's happening that you're seeing 3 slides taking up 15MB+, that's really odd.

LordMortis wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:47 pm So with ignorance, I say re-create the presentation with scratch. My opinion subject to change with more info.

Yeah, that's what I did (well, copied the slides into a brand new presentation) and you're right, it worked. I'll check some of those other things in the list you had.

At this point it's really just curiosity as I got what I wanted, but it would be nice to know what to look for in the future.

Sadly, I think I actually wrote up instructions for someone that sends me some pages for the deck. But it was a couple of years ago, and I think it's been purged.

But I think...

Select the View menu
Select Slide Master
Select one of the slides on the left - This should add a Format menu option - Select Format
Click on the Compress Pictures option


For mine, they had some background pictures on the title slides that were busting it.

TheMix wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:53 pm Sadly, I think I actually wrote up instructions for someone that sends me some pages for the deck. But it was a couple of years ago, and I think it's been purged.

But I think...

Select the View menu
Select Slide Master
Select one of the slides on the left - This should add a Format menu option - Select Format
Click on the Compress Pictures option


For mine, they had some background pictures on the title slides that were busting it.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot on Monday.

stessier wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:07 pm

TheMix wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:53 pm Sadly, I think I actually wrote up instructions for someone that sends me some pages for the deck. But it was a couple of years ago, and I think it's been purged.

But I think...

Select the View menu
Select Slide Master
Select one of the slides on the left - This should add a Format menu option - Select Format
Click on the Compress Pictures option


For mine, they had some background pictures on the title slides that were busting it.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot on Monday.

I should have added, while you select one picture to bring up the options, I believe you can uncheck the "apply to this pic" box and have it apply the changes to the whole document. For me it dropped the document from ~6GB to ~500MB. If I remember correctly.

It could be the template. A background that looks blank but is massive white image.

If it is a pptx file you can change the extension to .zip, extract it and see what's taking up all the space.

TheMix wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:20 pm

stessier wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:07 pm

TheMix wrote: ↑Fri Sep 18, 2020 4:53 pm Sadly, I think I actually wrote up instructions for someone that sends me some pages for the deck. But it was a couple of years ago, and I think it's been purged.

But I think...

Select the View menu
Select Slide Master
Select one of the slides on the left - This should add a Format menu option - Select Format
Click on the Compress Pictures option


For mine, they had some background pictures on the title slides that were busting it.

Thanks, I'll give that a shot on Monday.

I should have added, while you select one picture to bring up the options, I believe you can uncheck the "apply to this pic" box and have it apply the changes to the whole document. For me it dropped the document from ~6GB to ~500MB. If I remember correctly.

So you know, this helped. Turns out, under Slide Master there are over 100 different slides formatted, about half with background pictures. I was able to get it compressed to 9 MB, which is far more significant than anything else I was able to do.

Thanks for the help!