I’m going to go through this slowly, because I’ve been having great difficulty making myself understood when I asked what I thought was a very simple question on Twitter about 6 hours ago. I’m still trying to clarify it – hence this blog post.
I’m making a PowerPoint presentation for a speech I’m giving next week.
I use PowerPoint for Mac to create presentations, and I’m making it on my Macbook Pro.
On my Mac, I have a range of lovely fonts to choose from in PowerPoint. Usually, I use Helvetica Neue. I generally use white text on a black background.
However, in this particular case, I’ve been asked to send the PowerPoint presentation as a file via email to the conference organisers, who will then pre-load it on the computer in the auditorium.
That computer is a PC.
Is there a compatible font?
I’m trying to figure out how to guarantee that the presentation I make on my Mac will look right on the projector screen when I come to give that presentation.
So my first thought is to find and use a font that PCs will be guaranteed to support.
So far the only sans-serif font (and it must be sans-serif) that I can be sure that PCs will all have – is Arial. And I hate Arial. It would be my last resort (and no, Comic Sans is not an option).
A number of people have suggested other, perfectly acceptable fonts (Lucida, Gill Sans…) – but nobody’s seemed certain that all PCs will be sure to have them.
Should I use something else?
Another solution that’s been offered is that instead of giving a PowerPoint slide show, I instead make a PDF out of the slides – and then Adobe Reader will be able to display them, full screen, on the projector.
Nobody seems 100% certain about that “fact” yet – but if that’s true, that might be the workaround to go for. It’s not an ideal solution, but it’s a workable one.
But again the question remains – is it likely that every PC will have a copy of Adobe Reader?
Other suggestions have been forthcoming, but most of them require a live internet connection at the venue (unlikely) or they provide an innovative solution to a completely different problem.
Why is this so hard?
I can’t possibly be the only person in history ever to want to make a simple PowerPoint slideshow on a Mac, and worry whether it’s going to look like total typographical crap with random line breaks, dumb substitute fonts and poor layout when I actually come to give the talk.
Can someone PLEASE solve this? Thanks.
UPDATE: Just as I finished writing this, a couple of people tweeted to say that MOST PCs will have Adobe Reader – and that pressing CTRL-L on a PC will full-screen a PDF. Is that really my best option?
Why not email them a test slide, using the font you want, and ask them to check it works? Then, when they say yes, carry on creating.
If they say no, grab the font file, email that to them, and ask them to install it on the pc in advance, then when that’s done, ask them to check the test slide again.
Isn’t there a thing where you can embed fonts in a presentation? I am sure we had to do that back when we were doing the OME stuff?
@Paul No – I don’t want to cause them work, and I want to find a 100% reliable solution to this amazingly common situation.
@James No – that feature doesn’t exist in Powerpoint for Mac, sadly.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a PC without Verdana, that’s what I usually go for if I can’t use Helvetica. Same goes for Tahoma, Trebuchet, MS Sans.
Actually there are lots. This might help: http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/docs/appendix/fonts.htm
“Why is this so hard?”
Because you’re using a macintosh, silly ;)
Create the slides in Keynote, export slides to .jpg-files. Cut and paste those into Powerpoint?
I use the PDF route quite a lot when in this situation, and I’ve found it to work pretty well. However, I’m usually doing this on various PCs scattered around the University, which are pretty standardised software-wise. I would have thought it wouldn’t cause the organisers much hassle if you emailed them to ask if Adobe Reader is installed.
Either way, I’ve found from bitter experience that converting to PDF is much more reliable than trying to get a PowerPoint presentation to work properly cross-platform. Unless you have movies, which is a whole other problem :-)
What Lykle said ^^^
Failsafe.
On a PC you can select the text you want, right-click and “Save as a Picture”, delete the text, then just add the picture back in instead of the text on each slide. Not sure if it an be done that way on a Mac too. And I have to assume that will increase the size of the presentation, but it could be an option.
What Lukle said ^^^ Or: export (from Keynote) to an HTML file and upload it to a server (they have internet right?)
Send them the font file you want to use before hand. Have them install the font on the mac. Fonts are largely OS neutral.
Hi Andrew,
Let me come at it from a different angle – (for my sins!) I’ve been managing conference production AV for the last couple of years and so am used to presenters calling me up with the same concerns that you have. Most conferences will have a ‘slide preview’ facility for speakers where you can go and check that the presentation that you’ve uploaded works fine on the presentation machines to calm any concerns. However, even if this isn’t an option, it’s just basically good to have your bases covered. I agree with bsag, a PDF version is usually fine and if you’ve also got a copy of PDF reader on a memory stick then most AV techs will just install it for you if it’s not already there. Failing that then the exporting as jpegs and then making slides out of those in powerpoint is another often used workaround – though in both cases you lose the ability to animate the slides.
Final solution is just to make sure you have your mac with you along with your VGA adapter. Even if they don’t advertise it, many conferences have the facilities to accommodate presenters using macs if required. They are becoming more common now and this is a regular issue we have to work around.
Hope that helps….
Perhaps I’m not the typography guy that all y’all are, but saying (or at least implying) that you love Helvetica but hate Arial is kind of like saying you love the color red-orange but hate the color orange-red. Or you love Gala apples but hate Ambrosia apples. (If you know your apples, they’re basically interchangeable.)
I use a Mac for work, and while I’d like to use Helvetica Neue for everything (because it’s our official brand typeface, which is strange, though, considering 90 percent of our employees are on Windows) I create presentations for people who run Windows. So I use Arial Narrow, which is close enough (and, c’mon, not really unattractive) to Helvetica Neue’s roman condensed.
@troy: Also, I don’t understand why you’re sacrificing quality because you’re presenting on Windows. It’s PowerPoint. Typefaces aside, if you’re presenting full-screen, most people in the audience aren’t going to know what OS you’re using (and your animations, images, etc. are all going to be the same regardless). It’s not like you’re presenting the Mac Finder vs. Windows Explorer, unless that’s what your PowerPoint is about.
Oh, and one more thing about embedding fonts. You can embed fonts from Mac PowerPoint, but they have to be true type. Or can’t be true type. I can’t remember which. But I do know you can’t embed Helvetica because it is what it can’t be.