How to take notes from slides (without copying them)

If you're wondering how to take notes from slides, here's the short answer: don't copy what's on them, because you already have that. Write down what isn't on them. The slide is the skeleton your professor built. Your notes are everything they said on top of it: the examples, the reasons, and how one idea leads into the next.

In practice it comes down to three moments: what you jot down during the lecture, the pass you do the same day, and how you leave each topic written so you can actually study from it later. Get the first two right and the third mostly takes care of itself.

For years I turned slide decks into notes the worst possible way, which is by transcribing them. I filled pages and still walked into exams feeling like I knew nothing. Here's what I changed and why it works.

Why copying the slide doesn't help

Copying a slide word for word feels productive. You write a lot, you end up with a full notebook, and everything looks organized. The problem is you didn't think about anything along the way. Copying is moving text from one place to another, and your brain does it mostly on autopilot.

You're also duplicating something that already exists. The PDF of the deck will still be there during finals week. What won't be there is what your professor said while it was on the screen, and that's exactly what you lose if you're busy copying bullet points while they talk.

Your notes are worth what the slide leaves out. If a page of your notes could be rebuilt entirely from the PDF, you didn't need that page.

Before the lecture: have the slides ready

If your professor posts the deck before class, that's the best news you can get for note taking. Open it ten minutes before the lecture, not to study it, just to know what's coming and in what order.

That alone solves half the problem. You don't need to write down the headings or the definitions that are on the screen, so all your attention goes to what's being said. Ideally you have the PDF open on a tablet or laptop, or printed as handouts with a few slides per page and room in the margin, and you write on or next to each one.

If the slides only go up after class, that's fine. Take notes anyway, with the slide number or the topic in the margin, and match them up later.

During the lecture: write what you hear, not what you see

Say it's a Physiology lecture on the cardiac cycle. The slide reads "Ventricular systole: isovolumetric contraction, ejection." Copying that gives you nothing. What's worth writing is what the professor adds:

• The why. "Isovolumetric because all four valves are closed: the ventricle contracts but the volume doesn't change."
• The example or analogy. If they compare it to squeezing a bottle with the cap on, write it down. Those images are what bring the idea back later.
• The connections. "This explains the first heart sound, which we'll cover next week."
• What they repeat or stress. If they say something twice or say "this will be on the exam," star it.
• Your questions. A question mark in the margin wherever you got lost. A question you wrote down beats a sentence you copied and don't understand.

Use short phrases and your own abbreviations. This isn't for anyone else. It's a rough draft for you a few hours from now.

The same day: the pass that turns notes into study notes

This is the step almost nobody does and the one that pays off the most. That same afternoon or evening, while the lecture is still fresh, spend twenty to forty minutes cleaning it up. Not recopying your notes in nicer handwriting, but turning them into something you can study.

Why the same day: what you heard in class fades fast at first and more slowly after that, which is what Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve describes. By tomorrow you won't remember what that arrow you drew was supposed to mean. Today you will.

An order that works:

1. Go through the deck alongside your notes. Slide by slide, fill in whatever you left half written while you still remember it.
2. Group by idea, not by slide. Sometimes five slides are one idea, and sometimes one slide holds three. Your notes follow the ideas.
3. Write each idea in your own words. Two or three sentences that explain it the way you'd explain it to a classmate who missed the lecture.
4. Clear up or park your questions. Anything the textbook can answer, look it up. Anything it can't goes on a list for office hours.
5. End with three questions. At the bottom of each lecture's notes, write three questions you could get on the exam about it.

That last step is the one that matters most. When you review, instead of rereading, you'll try to answer those questions without looking. That's active recall, one of the best supported techniques for making things stick.

What good notes from a slide look like

A simple format, close to the Cornell method, is to split the page into two columns:

• Left, narrow: the question or keyword ("why isovolumetric?", "first heart sound").
• Right, wide: the explanation in your words, the professor's example, and what it connects to.
• Bottom: two lines that sum up the whole page.

If the slide has a graph or a diagram, don't redraw the whole thing. Write what it shows, what to look at first, and what it means ("ventricular pressure shoots up while volume stays flat: that's isovolumetric contraction"). A graph you can read beats a graph you copied neatly.

And if the slide is three words that explain nothing, that's where you need to write the most: write the slide your professor didn't. I went into that in more detail in slides with no explanation.

Where to keep your notes so they stay together

The classic mistake is having the deck in your downloads folder, your notes in a notebook and your questions on your phone. By exam time, just gathering all of it is a task of its own.

On paper or digital, the rule is the same: each lecture's notes live right next to its slides. If you print, staple your pages to the handouts. If you use a laptop, one folder per course with the PDF and a notes file for each lecture under the same name. Notion, OneNote or Goodnotes all work fine as long as you keep that order.

These days I take mine in Filmina, a web app that explains your lecture slides out loud, because the notes live inside that lecture's document. You write them like in Notion, you can dictate them or pull them from a photo of your notebook, and if the lecture happens before the slides are posted, you start a loose note and attach it later: the lines spread across the slides on their own. What helps me most is that Mina reads them when explaining that lecture, so what the professor said makes it into the explanation. It's all in class notes. It doesn't replace the same day pass, though. You still write that yourself.

From notes to the exam

If you do this lecture by lecture, you won't have to "turn the slides into notes" all at once at the end of the semester. They're already done. What's left is reviewing.

• A week out: pull together the notes from every lecture on a topic and write a shorter summary per topic. The steps are in how to summarize a presentation.
• When you review: cover the right column and answer the questions on the left. Whatever you can't answer, go back to the slide.
• At the end: the three questions from each lecture add up to a practice exam you wrote yourself.

Frequently asked questions

How do you take notes from a PowerPoint presentation?

Keep the deck open or printed during the lecture and write on or beside each slide what the professor says that isn't on it: the reasons, the examples and what they repeat. The same day, rewrite it in your own words and add questions to review with.

Should I copy the slides into my notes?

No. You already have the deck and you'll still have it later, so copying it just pulls your attention away from what's being said. Write down only what the professor adds and reference the slide number.

Is it better to take notes by hand or on a laptop?

Both work as long as you don't transcribe. Writing by hand forces you to condense because there's no time to write everything, while typing makes it easy to slip into copying verbatim. What matters most is that your notes stay next to their slides.

When should I rewrite my lecture notes?

The same day as the lecture, while you still remember what each note meant. By the next day a good part of it is gone, and a week later many loose notes won't make sense anymore.