There is only one notes page (notes pages: Printed pages that display author notes beneath the slide that the notes accompany.) per slide. The text AutoFit feature in Microsoft PowerPoint helps in fitting text to the placeholder (placeholders: Boxes with dotted or hatch-marked borders that are part of most slide layouts. These boxes hold title and body text or objects such as charts, tables, and pictures.) by reducing the font size if there's text overflow. To verify that AutoFit is turned on, on the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options. On the AutoFormat as you type tab, make sure the AutoFit body text to placeholder check box is selected.

Additional suggestions are:

• On the notes page, make the slide area smaller by clicking to select the slide placeholder and dragging it by the sizing handles. Use the same procedure to make the notes area larger.
• In the presentation, create an additional slide after the current one so you get another notes page. You might move part of the text from your original slide to the additional slide, and add the notes that correlate to that text.
• Send the notes to Microsoft Word (File menu, point to Send to, then click Microsoft Word, and select one of the notes options), where you can have as many pages for notes as you want.

The notes pane (notes pane: The pane in normal view in which you type notes that you want to accompany a slide. You print these notes as notes pages or have them display when you save a presentation as a Web page.) is not a preview of your printed notes, so the text you don't see probably didn't fit on the notes page (notes pages: Printed pages that display author notes beneath the slide that the notes accompany.). To see an accurate preview as you type notes, on the Standard toolbar (toolbar: A bar with buttons and options that you use to carry out commands. To display a toolbar, click Customize on the Tools menu, and then click the Toolbars tab.), click Print Preview , click the arrow in the Print What list, and then click Notes Pages.

To see formatted text in the notes pane (notes pane: The pane in normal view in which you type notes that you want to accompany a slide. You print these notes as notes pages or have them display when you save a presentation as a Web page.), click Show Formatting on the Standard toolbar.

In Microsoft PowerPoint, the three-slide layout includes ruled lines. You could try a different PowerPoint layout for number of slides per page (the other layouts don't include ruled lines). Also, you can send the handout to Microsoft Word (on the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Microsoft Word), select one of the layout options with ruled lines, and then delete the lines in Word.

A single handout page will print starting with page number 1. Outlines also always start at page 1. If you think you might need to reprint a handout page and want to avoid having a page number that's out of sequence with the rest of your handout, you could turn off page numbers before you originally print the handout by doing the following:

• On the View menu, click Header and Footer, click the Notes and Handouts tab, clear the Page number check box, and then click Apply to All.

An alternative is to send the handout to Microsoft Word (on the File menu, point to Send To, and then click Microsoft Word), use headers and footers in Word to number your pages, and select only the page you want when you need to reprint.

The maximum number of slides per page in Microsoft PowerPoint is nine. However, if you're using a PostScript printer, you may have the option of printing multiple pages on one sheet of paper. So, for example, if you were using a six-slides-per-page handout in PowerPoint and you then selected to print two handout pages on a sheet, you would have 12 slides on that page. See the Help for your PostScript printer to find out the exact steps.