Personal notes when preparing a talk with LaTeX-beamer class

Question

Suppose I prepare a talk using the beamer class. To each slide I want to add personal notes (detailing what I exactly want to say, frequently asked questions etc.). So is there a smart way to write those notes into the same file and get a nice printed version of my slides with my personal comments (of course the presentation itself should be without those notes)?

Answer 1

You are interested in the \note command. Please refer to Section 19 Adding Notes for Yourself of the beamer manual.

A little example (taken from the manual):

\documentclass{beamer}

%\setbeameroption{show notes} un-comment to see the notes

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}

\begin{itemize}
  \item<1-> Eggs
  \item<2-> Plants
    \note[item]<2>{Tell joke about plants.}
    \note[item]<2>{Make it short.}
  \item<3-> Animals
\end{itemize}

\end{frame}

\end{document}

To print the note pages without hints or fancy settings, you can use the plain option for the note page template:

\setbeamertemplate{note page}[plain]