Using PowerPoint to save a group of Images as a PDF

We genealogist find that we use tools that are not designed for genealogy; however they are just as useful to us. One such tool or software program that I found has been very useful in my genealogy is PowerPoint and I don’t mean for giving a monthly program to my genealogical society.

I have found PowerPoint to be a very useful tool for converting a series of pictures into a PDF document. The other day I was looking up US Revolutionary War Pension files via Anestry.com and found out that I could not save a group of pages in the file but I could save each individual page as an image. I wanted these as one document and remembered that PowerPoint does have the capability to take a group of images and create individual slides for each page. Once in PowerPoint, then I could save the printout of slides as a PDF document. The following are the steps I used to complete this task.

First of all, in Ancestry I had to save each image and I did this by naming each image “image ###” where the pound signs are the number of the image in the database.  Then I opened PowerPoint and I have 2010 version.  This brings up a blank slide. I switched to the “Insert” menu and then selected “Photo Album” and “New Photo Album”. This brings up the Photo Album pop-up box and I clicked the “File/Disk” button.  I had to find the folder that I had my images saved, and I click the first image and then moved to the last image and press “shift”+ right click and this will select all the images then select insert.  This will insert the images in file name order, which is the exact order I wanted since I gave them all an image number file name.  Next I clicked the “Create” button.  This proceeded to create all my slides plus a cover slide with the title of Photo Album and my name. This slide is perfect for me to create my source citation.

I decided I wanted my Ancestry “printer friendly” version of the source. Going back to the index page of the record, I select the Print button from the upper-right-hand corner of the screen. This brings up a nice “printer friendly” version of the screen and I proceed to use my Snipping Tool to save it as another jpg image.  I insert this image onto the title page of the PowerPoint presentation.  Now I have my source citation included as part of the PowerPoint Presentation.

Next I select File and then Save As, I change the “Save as Type” to PDF and make sure I have selected the proper location for my new file and give it a meaningful name.  After a few moments, this will bring up my new PDF file and it contains 22 pages of my newly created document. This will make it so much easier for me to share if I wish.  Now it is optional if you want to save the entire Presentation in the PowerPoint format, since you could easily recreate this from all the images you already have. I save the images in a sub-folder together.