Getting started with Flat Pack

Flat Pack works directly on the PowerPoint presentation you already have open. There’s no separate export step to set up first. Here’s how to make your first secured PDF. If you haven’t installed yet, start with installing Flat Pack.

Flatten your first file

1. Open your finished presentation in PowerPoint.
2. Click the Flat Pack tab in the ribbon.
3. Click Create PDF. Flat Pack exports every slide as an image, rebuilds them into a new presentation, then saves and secures the result as a PDF.
4. Save the PDF when prompted. Your original PowerPoint is untouched.

You now have a flattened, secured PDF: every slide is a single image, so nothing on it can be selected, copied, or edited.

Caution

Once a file is flattened it can’t be turned back into an editable original. Flattening turns your slides into images for good. Always keep your source PowerPoint somewhere safe.

Create a flattened PowerPoint instead

Click Create PPT to run the same flattening step but save a flattened PowerPoint rather than a PDF. Use it when you’d rather export to PDF yourself with PowerPoint’s own File → Save As, or as a diagnostic. If a PDF from Create PDF looks wrong, run Create PPT first and check whether the flattened PowerPoint looks right. That shows whether Flat Pack’s PDF export is the problem.

Keep an object live with Do Not Flatten

Flattening normally turns everything into a flat image, which kills hyperlinks, animations, and interactive elements. To keep one live:

1. Select the object on the slide: the shape, textbox, or image you want to stay live.
2. On the Flat Pack tab, choose Do Not Flatten.
3. Flatten as usual. That object stays clickable and working instead of becoming part of the image.

Make a fillable PDF form field

You can turn a text box into a field buyers can type into in the exported PDF:

1. Select a text box.
2. On the Flat Pack tab, choose Convert to PDF Form Field.
3. Flatten with Create PDF. That text box becomes a fillable field in the PDF.

A few limits worth knowing before you flatten:

• To let the font be changeable later in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (Ctrl+E), set the text box to Rich Text with Autosize off before flattening. It can’t be enabled afterward.
• Tables can’t be converted directly. Use individual text boxes or shapes instead.
• Ungroup grouped shapes first, and keep any rotation to 90, 180, or 270 degrees, since PDF form fields don’t allow other angles.

For step-by-step examples, see Creating your first editable PDF with Flat Pack and Create autofillable PDF certificates with Flat Pack in PowerPoint.

Choose what the secured PDF allows

Flat Pack applies the same kind of encryption as Adobe Acrobat Pro, so you decide what people can do with the file. Open Flat Pack Preferences → PDF settings to choose whether the PDF can be printed or edited, set margins, and a few more advanced options.

Sharpen or shrink the output

Because every page is rasterized to an image, there’s a tradeoff between sharpness and file size. Open Flat Pack Preferences → Image Settings to:

• Raise the image quality setting for sharper output.
• Switch the image type between PNG and JPG to trade sharpness against file size.

If flattened output is too large for a platform like Google Slides, lower the image-quality setting or split a big deck into a few smaller files. Those are the only real options, since each page is an image.

For output that looks wrong, form-field details, and other fixes, see the FAQ.