How to Quickly Remove All Speaker Notes in a PowerPoint Presentation

Use PowerPoint’s Inspector to Remove Speaker Notes

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated March 29, 2019

Applies to: Microsoft^® PowerPoint^® 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019 and 365 (Windows)

In Microsoft PowerPoint, presenters may enter additional information as speaker notes in the Notes panel in Normal View. However, when a presentation is distributed to other users, the creator of the presentation may not want to share their notes. Rather than deleting the speaker notes one by one, you can use the Inspector to quickly remove all speaker notes at one time.

Recommended article: How to Add, Edit and Format PowerPoint Speaker Notes

Where is the Inspector?

The Inspector is a useful tool that was first added in 2007 and can remove a number of things from a PowerPoint presentation. In PowerPoint 2010 and later versions, you can access the Inspector through the File tab in the Ribbon:

To display the Inspector:

Open a Powerpoint presentation.
Click the File tab in the Ribbon.
Click Info and click on the Check for Issues button. A drop-down menu appears.
Select Inspect Document. A dialog box appears.

Below is the Inspector in PowerPoint 2010 which is basically the same in later versions:

Removing All Speaker Notes

To remove all speaker notes using the Inspector:

Open the Powerpoint presentation with the notes you wish to remove.
Save a copy of the presentation so you can keep the original with the notes.
In the copy, click the File tab in the Ribbon.
Click Info and click the Check for Issues button. A drop-down menu appears.
Select Inspect Document. A dialog box appears.
Ensure that Presentation Notes is checked (you may need to scroll down in the dialog box) and then click Inspect. If there are speaker notes in the file, a Remove All button will appear indicating that notes have been found.
Click Remove All beside Presentation Notes to remove all notes. Note that this cannot be undone.
Click Close.

If you are a keyboard-only user, you may want to check out the series on navigating and selecting in Microsoft Office using a keyboard.