Printing in grayscale in Windows IT computer labs

Owned by Stephen Ashby
Last updated: Apr 13, 2023 by Tammy Voigt
2 min read

Color photos and images within Adobe Acrobat PDF and Microsoft PowerPoint slides can create very large print files that either take forever to print, or worse, it can cause the print job to error when printing and not print out at all. To avoid that, you can print your PDFs and PowerPoint slides as grayscale rather than color to reduce the size.

Printing in grayscale (black and white) in Adobe Acrobat  

  • When printing your document in Adobe Acrobat, you’ll notice underneath the Properties button is a checkbox to “Print in grayscale (black and white). Make sure this checkbox is checked (as shown below) to print your document in black and white rather than color.

Printing in grayscale (black and white) in PowerPoint

  • In PowerPoint, when you click Print, you’ll see an option at the bottom of the settings to print in Color. Select that and choose Grayscale from the dropdown menu print your document in black and white rather than color.


You can also reduce the size further by re-saving the file using "Save As," and by using the Compress Pictures option in Microsoft Office products (Select the photo or image and then select Picture Tools).

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