A deck has one source file and several destinations, and each destination breaks something different.
The PDF is the one that gets forwarded, and it changes three things. Animation and transitions don't exist there, so the exported page shows the final state of every build. That's why a build needs a correct still version. Fonts are embedded or substituted, and a substituted font reflows text, which is how a line that fitted becomes a line that overlaps. Transparency, gradients and effects are flattened, which is where a five-band ladder becomes five bands nobody can tell apart. The export dialog's quality setting matters too. The minimum-size option downsamples images, which is right for a review copy and wrong for anything that will be printed.
What breaks when you print a deck?
Print breaks thin things and light things. A rule at 0.25 pt is 0.088 mm wide and asks a 300 dpi printer for 1.04 device pixels. So it sometimes prints as a grey suggestion and sometimes not at all. At 0.5 pt it is 2.08 device pixels at 300 dpi and survives, but the same rule at 150 dpi is 1.04 pixels and is back in the danger zone. The safe floor for anything that must survive an office laser is 0.75 pt, which is 3.13 device pixels at 300 dpi.
The same logic applies to pale fills and light greys, which read on a backlit screen and disappear on paper. And greyscale printing collapses colour encodings that were carrying meaning. Any deck that might be printed in black and white needs encodings that survive the conversion, which is one more argument for position and length over hue.
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How should you print handouts?
Handouts are a different artefact, and the arithmetic says so. Three slides to a page prints each slide about 3.10 in wide against the 13.333 in slide, a scale of 0.2325. Type set at 18 pt on the slide prints at 4.19 pt on that handout, and nobody can read that. To print at a modest 8 pt you'd need 34.41 pt on the slide. Two slides to a page is 5.50 in, a scale of 0.4125, and 18 pt prints at 7.43 pt, which is marginal. For the 42-slide deck, the page counts are 21 sheets at two-up, 14 at three-up and 7 at six-up.
Handouts aren't bad. But a presented deck printed six-up is a memory aid for someone who was in the room. A handout meant to be read on its own is a document, and that's a different file with more words and fewer slides.
What breaks on other people's machines?
Other people's machines are the destination nobody remembers. Fonts that aren't installed will be substituted. Embedding solves it, and choosing between embedding only the used characters and embedding the full font is a size decision worth 3.70 MB on the audited deck. Linked workbooks and linked charts break when the file moves, so links are either resolved into the file or deliberately broken with the data pasted as values. Embedded video carries its own codec question and its own size. And a file that opens correctly on your machine has proved nothing. So the last item on the checklist is to open the exported copy.