PPT: Maximum Number of Objects Per Slide and Notes (87556)

SUMMARY

PowerPoint has a limit to the number of objects that can be in Slides view, Notes view, or any of the master views. This limit is different depending on which version of PowerPoint you are using.

   Version  Object Limit
   -------  ------------
   7.0      2040 (2048 minus reserved placeholder objects)
   4.0      2040 (2048 minus reserved placeholder objects)
   3.0      2046 (2048 minus reserved title, slide image, and body objects)
   2.0      1069 (1070 minus reserved title and slide picture objects)

MORE INFORMATION

Versions 3.0, 4.0, 7.0

PowerPoint versions 3.0, 4.0, and 7.0, have a limit of 2048 objects per Slides view, Notes view, or any of the master views. This includes the Title, Body, Master Title, Master Body, and Slide Image objects in PowerPoint 3.0 and the AutoLayout placeholder objects in PowerPoint 4.0 and 7.0.

This means that only 2046 objects (PowerPoint 3.0) or 2040 objects (PowerPoint 4.0 and 7.0) can be added to the Slides, Notes, Slide Master, and Notes master views.

PowerPoint gives you the following warning message if you try to exceed the limit:

Sorry, the slide has too many objects to perform this operation.

In addition to getting this message when you paste information to or make changes to a document, you may also get the message when you convert a non- PowerPoint object to a PowerPoint object using the Ungroup command (which is not available in PowerPoint 2.0).

Version 2.0

PowerPoint 2.0 is limited to 1070 objects per Slides view, Notes view, or any of the master views. For the Slides, Notes, Slide Master, and Notes master views, this includes the Title and Slide Picture objects. This means that only 1069 objects can be added to the Slides, Notes, Slide Master, and Notes master views because the reserved objects in those views cannot be deleted.

PowerPoint 2.0 for Windows warns you if you have multiple objects in the Clipboard and pasting the contents of the Clipboard would exceed this limit:

Sorry, you cannot paste all the objects to this slide, some have been pasted. Use Undo to recover the slide's state before pasting.

PowerPoint 2.0 for the Macintosh does not warn you under the same circumstances. Instead, you receive the following warning when saving a presentation in which the current view exceeds this limit:

There are too many objects on the current slide. Some will be lost.

If it is not the current view that exceeds the limit, PowerPoint 2.0 for the Macintosh does not display a warning message, but some of the objects will be lost anyway.

If you are at exactly the limit for the current view, the Paste command is unavailable (dimmed).

WORKAROUND

You can reduce the number of objects in PowerPoint by converting multiple objects to a single picture. A picture is treated as just one object in PowerPoint. To convert multiple PowerPoint objects to a single picture, do the following:

Select the objects that you want to convert, using the various methods for performing multiple selections in PowerPoint.
On the Edit menu, click Cut.
If you are using version 2.0, click Paste As Picture on the Edit menu.

-or-

If you are using version 3.0 or later, click Paste Special on the Edit menu. Click Picture and then click Paste (version 3.0) or click OK (version 4.0 and later).

The resulting picture is treated as a single object and allows you to add more objects to your presentation.

In versions 3.0 and 4.0, the resulting picture can be converted back to PowerPoint objects using the Ungroup command.