How Do I Save Images From A PowerPoint Presentation?

David from CA writes: I’m trying to copy to My Pictures a slide or two from a Powerpoint presentation download. I can save the whole thing, but I only want the images. All the instructions I see say to right-click on the image. I have no option when I right-click.

When you receive a PowerPoint presentation and only need to save a single image, rather than the full presentation itself, there’s actually a pretty simple solution available, even if you can’t right-click the image at first. Embedded images don’t always survive the transition as separate files when being emailed around in a PowerPoint document, which can be fixed by forcing PowerPoint to save the image as a GIF or JPEG.

To start the process, click the image in question so it’s highlighted on the PowerPoint slide. With the image highlighted, navigate to the “Home” tab at the top of the presentation and click the “Copy” button, which is located in the “Clipboard” section of the ribbon.

Now that you’ve got the picture copied to the clipboard, you can save it as a proper image file by clicking the “Paste” button in the “Home” tab and then selecting the “Paste Special” option.

In the new window that pops up on the screen, click the “Paste” radio button and then select the type of image file you’d like to use in the list of options, such as “GIF,” “JPEG,” “Bitmap,” etc. Click the “OK” button to paste another copy of the image onto the slide.

At this point you should be able to right-click the picture, since it has been saved as a specific image type usable by PowerPoint. Right-click the pasted image and select the “Save As Picture” option from the pop-up menu.

Type whatever name you want to use for the picture in the text box and then select the type of image file you’d like to save the picture as from the drop-down menu. Click “Save” to save the image to your computer’s hard drive.

But what if you still can’t right-click the picture for some reason? In this instance, there’s still a way to save the image, although it requires a little more effort. Remember how you previously copied the image to the clipboard? Since it’s still saved there, open up any image editing program that lets you paste images. Even something as simple as Microsoft Paint will work.

Create a new file in the image editing program and then click the “Paste” option at the top of the screen, or press “Ctrl” and “V” to manually paste the image. Now you can save the image as whatever file type you’d like in Paint (or whichever image editing tool you are using).

In the event that all these attempts fail, there remains one final option using a keyboard shortcut. Navigate to the slide containing the picture, and take a screenshot by tapping the “FN” and “Prtsc” keys on your keyboard. This shortcut saves an exact copy of everything currently on your screen into the clipboard.

Return to your image editing program and click “Paste” to bring up the screenshot. You can then use the program’s “crop” feature to simply cut out everything on the screen besides the image you need.

~ Ty Arthur