Include footnotes and presenter notes in PDF exports
H Jones
Pitch decks often have a lot of background info and context that gets recorded only in the speaker notes. However, pitch decks are frequently shared for async review. The ability to share a special version of the deck w/notes and/or exporting a PDF with notes appended to each slide would provide immediate value for founders and anyone else who use visually spartan decks. Otherwise, I'm stuck creating a second deck and manually attaching all the notes for async context, which is a huge time suck.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Merged in a post:
Footnotes should export to PDF's + endnote option
Catherine J
- Export to PDF and possible label change: After using footnotes was a bit surprised they did not export into PDFs. (Now I have to spend time undoing the footnotes and manually create a bibliography). So not a great experience as they are not real functioning footnotes at all, if you have to manually hover a mouseover onscreen tone able to read the citation. If you are not going to change functionality, then rename the function to something like "hover citation" or "web view citation only " to more accurately describe the functionality.
- Endnote option: If the proper functionally is going to be implemented to work like real footnotes that appear at the bottom of a card/page, also give users the option to selected them as endnotes, so they can appear at the end of the document.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Merged in a post:
Footnotes should appear as visible notes in PDF export (not hidden behind the superscript number)
AD U
Request: When exporting a Gamma to PDF, footnotes should render as a visible footnote section at the bottom of the card (like traditional footnotes), instead of staying hidden behind the superscript number. This is important because many people share presentations as PDFs, and hidden footnotes are easy to miss in that format.
Optional add-on: A toggle to choose “hidden in editor, visible in PDF” would be ideal for people who want clean editing but full visibility in exports.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Hey AD U, this is super clear and honestly makes a ton of sense for PDF sharing. Thanks for spelling out the desired behavior and the toggle idea, I’ll pass this along to the team.
Quick question so we get it right: in the PDF, do you want footnotes to appear per card (at the bottom of each card) or collected once at the end of the PDF? And should they include the full footnote text even if the superscript isn’t clicked (basically always visible)?
AD U
Hi Nik, thank you for the prompt response.
Yes, the footnote should appear on each card, positioned at the bottom of the relevant card. IMO footnotes are intended to provide additional information without disrupting the flow of the main content. On that basis, it seems sensible for them to remain consistently visible, similar to how they appear in a DOCX or PPT file.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Merged in a post:
Include footnotes and speakers notes in exports
Ahmed Sohail
Would love to have the footnote when exported as a pdf file and clicked on to view the webpage.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Merged in a post:
Make shareable and exportable the presentation Notes
J
Jérémie Alliaume
I would like to share my presentation letting the ability to the user to access my presentation notes the same way I can use it while connected to my Gamma account.
Furthermore, i would like to have the ability to export my presentation notes, to print them or export them in PDF.
Thank you.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Hi H Jones, thanks for the suggestion. I'll cut a ticket to look into this.
So I have the correct understanding:
- Are you sharing a link, or a PDF/PPT?
- If the notes were appended to a PDF, how would you expect them to be styled? Below the card, to the side, etc
If you're sharing gammas via link, footnotes, toggles and nested cards all are good ways to hide additional detail and notes. But they don't work as well if you're exporting, since they get expanded inline.
Jenn Fir
Nik Payne (Gamma design) Ideally, I'd like to share a link OR a PDF/PPT.
As far as exported PDF styling, I think it'd be easiest to follow Microsoft Powerpoint's existing PPT slides + speaker notes print formatting [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/print-slides-with-or-without-speaker-notes-02952fc2-2921-4305-b8b2-e98644a93e06]. That would be most familiar for PPT users, and reduce your design load.
I have absolutely used the heck out of footnotes, toggles, and nested cards to provide additional context! but as you mentioned, their inline expansion when exported is not ideal. I'm looking for a one-document, multi-output solution: I can present it live with speaker notes and I can also export that same preso as a PDF with speaker notes/context provided by other inline elements but formatted for easy readability (example: one slide per page, with supporting content expanded into simple paragraph text format, separated by headers like Speaker Notes, Footnotes, and the titles of nested cards). Let me know if you'd like sketches; I've done quite a bit of UI/UX design and would be happy to dump my brain onto paper.
Nik Payne (Gamma design)
Jenn Fir: Thanks so much for the detail. Yeah, we'd love some sketches (I'll drop them in our company slack). The caveat being this is likely low priority for us in the immediate future (we're a small team of 16). You can email me at nik@gamma.app
We did just ship speakers notes in PPT export a couple days ago (they were missing previously) so the V1 of this is live
Jenn Fir
Nik Payne (Gamma design) Excellent, this will help a lot. I can export a PPT as a PDF from there... it won't be nearly as pretty (I love my gradient titles) but it will be serviceable++.