Creating PDF from PPT notes page - many files

Hi,
Something to try.
With either Acrobat Pro 8 or 9 Pro/Pro Extended (may also work with Standard) a individual or a single PDF can be produced that contains the PowerPoint "Speaker Notes".

Place the PowerPoint files into a common directory on the local machine.
Open PowerPoint.
Close the default PPT (PPTX) file that opens.
From the ribbon, select Acrobat.
Open the Prefernces, for Acrobat.
In the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog, under the Settings tab, select Convert Speaker Notes.
Configuration settings in Acrobat PDF Maker dialog are "sticky".
Close the Adobe PDF Maker dialog. Close PowerPoint.
For Windows, open Windows Explorer.
Select the PPT/PPTX files.
Right click to open the context menu.
Select Convert to Adobe PDF.
If the local machine is rebost 300 files ought not be an issue.
However, it may be more prudent to process smaller "slices".
Once all PPT/PPTX files have been converted to PDF you can process each for a comments (annotation) report output PDF.
Alternatively, you could combine in larger PDFs or a single PDF from which you develop report(s).

If 300 PPT/PPTX files are processed to provide 300 PDFs and these are not going to be combined it is possible (with Acrobat Pro) to use a Batch Sequence to "Summarize Comments" which will provide PDFs containing just the annotation (PPT note). The report provides source file metadata such that an annotation is correlated to where it came from.

A note:
--| The above setting results in converting PowerPoint Speaker Notes to text annotations in the PDF.
--| These annotations are created on a separate layer that can be toggled on or off.
--| When "on", A sticky note icon appears in the upper left of the PDF page.
--| To toggle "off", open the Layers pane. Click on the "eye" icon.
--| The annotation's sticky note icon becomes hidden.

Regardless of the on/off toggle, the text content of the annotation (the PowerPoint speaker note(s)) is available in the Comments List.


Be well...

Thank you so much for the detailed reply! It's been extremely helpful and I truly appreciate your assistance.

I fought with Acrobat and PPT for a few days. (I think I forgot to mention, I have PPT 2003). I thought I would test the process first with 20 files before attempting it with 300. The thing is, with Acrobat Standard, I got stuck at this step: "In the Acrobat PDFMaker dialog, under the Settings tab, select Convert Speaker Notes." No matter how much I looked, I could not find "Convert Speaker Notes" to select.

So after a while I broke down and went and downloaded a free trial of Acrobat Pro. Once I did that, it all worked seamlessly, I was able to follow your instructions exactly, and at the end I used a Batch Sequence to Summarize Comments, which provided me 20 PDFs with the PPT notes.

Once again, thanks for all your help!

All the best,
Alina