In addition to the controls in the Print dialog box in PowerPoint, there are controls you can set that affect the printer you have chosen. In the Printer section of the Print dialog box, you can open the Name drop-down list and choose the printer you want to use to print the job, as shown in Figure 25-8. Most home users have only one printer, but business users may have more than one to choose from, especially on a network.

FIGURE 25-8
Select a printer if you have more than one.

After choosing a printer, you can click the Properties button to display its Properties dialog box. The properties shown are different for different kinds of printers. Figure 25-9 shows the box for my Lexmark Optra S 1855 printer, a color laser printer. Notice that there are six tabs: Layout, Paper/Quality, Output Options, Watermark, Profiles, and About. The tabs may be different for your printer.

FIGURE 25-9
Each printer’s options are slightly different, but the same types of settings are available on most printers.

These settings affect how the printer behaves in all Windows-based programs, not just in PowerPoint, so you need to be careful not to change anything that you don’t want globally changed. Here are some of the settings you may be able to change on your printer:

• Orientation: You can choose between Portrait and Landscape. It’s not recommended that you change this setting here, though; make such changes in the Page Setup dialog box in PowerPoint instead. Otherwise, you may get the wrong orientation on a printout in other programs.
• Page Order: You can choose Front to Back or Back to Front. This determines the order the pages print.
• Pages Per Sheet: The default is 1, but you can print smaller versions of several pages on a single sheet. This option is usually only available on PostScript printers.
• Paper Size: The default is Letter, but you can change to Legal, A4, or any of several other sizes.
• Paper Source: If your printer has more than one paper tray, you may be able to select Upper or Lower.
• Copies: This sets the default number of copies that should print. Be careful; this number is a multiplier. If you set two copies here, and then set two copies in the Print dialog box in PowerPoint, you end up with four copies.
• Graphics Resolution: If your printer has a range of resolutions available, you may be able to choose the resolution you want. My printer lets me choose between 300 and 600 dots per inch (dpi); on an inkjet printer, choices are usually 360, 720, and 1,440 dpi. Achieving a resolution of 1,440 on an inkjet printer usually requires special glossy paper.
• Graphic Dithering: On some printers, you can set the type of dithering that makes up images. Dithering is a method of creating shadows (shades of gray) from black ink by using tiny crosshatch patterns. You may be able to choose between Coarse, Fine, and None.
• Image Intensity: On some printers, you can control the image appearance with a light/dark slide bar.

Some printers, notably inkjets, come with their own print-management software. If that’s the case, you may have to run that print-management software separately from outside of PowerPoint for full control over the printer’s settings. You can usually access such software from the Windows Start menu.

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