text tool

Extract speaker notes from a PowerPoint

Choose a .pptx and get only the speaker notes back, slide by slide, each under the slide's title, as plain text or Markdown. It is the script without the slides: something to print, to read on a phone while rehearsing, or to hand to a colleague presenting in your place.

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How it works

  1. 1

    Choose the .pptx

    The deck you will present from, saved as .pptx.

  2. 2

    Pick a format

    Plain text for printing or pasting into a message; Markdown when the notes go into a document or a notes app that renders headings.

  3. 3

    Decide on empty slides

    Leave slides with no notes out, or keep their headings so the numbering still matches the deck during rehearsal.

  4. 4

    Copy or download

    Copy the script, or save it as .txt or .md named after the deck.

Where the notes live in the file

Each slide in a .pptx can have a notes slide, a separate part of the file linked to it. The notes slide has a picture placeholder for the slide image, a placeholder for the slide number and a body placeholder holding what you typed under the slide. This tool follows each slide's link to its notes and reads only the body placeholder, so the slide number and image placeholders do not clutter the result. Slides are taken in presentation order, the same order the deck plays in, not the order the files happen to sit in the archive.

Why export the notes on their own

Printing notes pages from PowerPoint gives one slide image and its notes per page, which is many pages for a long deck. A notes only script is shorter and easier to rehearse from. It also works on a phone, where opening a large .pptx is slow. Teams use it to review what a presenter plans to say without the slides getting in the way, and translators use it to work on the spoken text separately from the on screen words.

Turning notes into a voiceover script

Speaker notes are close to a spoken script already, which makes them a good start for a narrated video of the same talk. Read the extracted script aloud once with a timer, or paste it into the speaking time calculator to see how long each section runs. The video generator writes a promo or explainer from a brief, and a pasted script of key points gives it the substance to work from. Keep sentences short: notes written as fragments read badly aloud.

Notes in the presentation builder

The presentation builder keeps rich text speaker notes for every slide, with bold, italic, underline, bullets and numbering, and they are never shown on the slide itself. In present mode the N key shows the notes, and they can pop out into a second window you drag to another screen. If you rebuild a deck there from an old PowerPoint, paste each slide's extracted notes into its notes pane so the delivery comes along with the content.

Sharing notes without the slides

Sometimes the notes are more sensitive than the slides, or the other way round. Extracting the notes lets you send a presenter their script without the full deck, or send reviewers the deck while keeping draft notes back. The text is produced in this page and nothing is stored, so the only copy is the one you choose to save or paste.

Keeping the script and the slides in step

When notes are kept as headings for slides with none, the numbers in the script always match the deck, which matters when someone says jump to slide 14 during a rehearsal. When the script is for reading only, leaving empty slides out makes it shorter. Either way, export the notes again after editing the deck, because a slide added or moved changes every number after it.

Limits

  • Formatting in the notes, such as bold, colour and bullets, is flattened to plain lines.
  • A slide title is read from its title placeholder. A slide whose title is a plain text box shows its number only.
  • Notes added in Google Slides come through when the deck is downloaded as .pptx.
  • .ppt files need saving as .pptx first.

What it does not do

  • It does not change the deck or its notes.
  • It does not read the notes aloud.
  • It does not upload the file.

Questions people ask

How do I print only the speaker notes in PowerPoint?

PowerPoint prints notes pages with a slide image above the notes, or you can export to Word with notes beside small slide images. For the notes alone, extract them here, then print the text or Markdown from any editor. That gives a compact script without slide images taking up most of each page.

Can I get speaker notes out of a PDF?

Only if the notes were printed into the PDF as notes pages. A normal slide export has no notes. In that case use a PDF text extractor on the notes pages. The original .pptx is a better source, because the notes come out cleanly without page furniture.

Why does a slide show a number but no title?

The title is taken from the slide's title placeholder. Slides built from a blank layout, or with a title typed into an ordinary text box, have no title placeholder, so only the number appears. The notes themselves are unaffected and still come out in full.

Does it keep bullet points in my notes?

Each paragraph in the notes becomes its own line, so bulleted notes stay on separate lines, but the bullet symbols themselves are formatting and are not included. In Markdown mode paragraphs are separated by blank lines, which most editors show as separate paragraphs.

Can I extract notes from a Keynote presentation?

Export it from Keynote as a PowerPoint file first, using File, Export To, PowerPoint. Keynote writes its presenter notes into the notes slides of the .pptx, so they come through here like notes written in PowerPoint. Check a couple of slides afterwards, because heavily styled notes can lose some line breaks in the export.

Rebuild the talk with notes on every slide

Take what you made here into presentations.

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Background reading: the question page on this.

Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .