We always seem to get more responses to our tips about PowerPoint, and last week was no different.  So, to add to our suggestions about Saving PPT, this week we will cover how to embed your fonts, and why it is important.  It is important because; if your PPT is displayed on a PC other than the one it was created on, it is possible that the fonts you used, may not be on that PC.  The likelihood is compounded if your PPT is shared across different platforms, i.e. IBM vs Apple.

You may think that you picked well known serif, and sans serif fonts, but you may not know what fonts were used in your template, or other imported items.  Take a look.  Go to File / Properties / Contents - and you can see all the fonts being used in your presentation.  It is easy to have several additional fonts creep in when you mix styles from more than one slide design, or if you use a diacritical, foreign font, currency symbol, etc.- additional fonts may be added.

So why is this a problem? If the font you used is not resident on the PC, a substitution is made, and that substituted font may not be a  close fit to the attributes of your font.  The result is that some characters may not display properly, and your carefully aligned bullets, or paragraphs may be swimming all over the page.

When you are ready for your final save of a PPT, do a Save As, and select the Tools drop down.  From there, select Save Options, and check the box to Embed True Type Fonts.  The file size will be larger, but if you send the file to someone else, they will be guaranteed to see what you saw.