I've been working with a local animal rescue, and I think a PowerPoint presentation is just
what we need to showcase some pictures and information about the pets available for adoption.
But how do we get to this from a slide that started out like this? The key is understanding
how slides, layouts, and placeholders work. Let's take a look.
Placeholders are the areas on the slide enclosed by little dotted lines. Placeholders can contain
text; some of them can even contain things like tables and pictures. Just hover over
the commands in the placeholder to see what you can do.
The way these placeholders are arranged on the slide has to do with the slide layout.
This layout happens to include a placeholder for the title and two placeholders for content.
You can choose the layout when you first insert a slide, or change it later depending on the
type of information you decide to include. That's what I'd like to do with this slide,
which is supposed to be more of a section header.
To open a menu of all the different slide layouts, all we have to do is click the Layout
command in the Slides group. Here, we can see that this slide is using the Two Content
layout, but based on the thumbnail for Section Header, I think this one would be a better
fit. Just click to change, and - this is perfect. PowerPoint immediately takes the contents
of my placeholders, applies the new layout, and even modifies the formatting to better
fit the purpose of the slide.
Very quickly, I'd like to show you what to do when a layout is almost perfect but needs
a little reworking. This looks great, for example, but the layout includes a placeholder
I'm not planning to use. To delete any unwanted placeholders, all you have to do is position
your mouse on the dotted border (notice how the cursor changes) and click to select it.
Now press Backspace or Delete on your keyboard.
On the other hand, if you wanted to add to your current layout, you can include text
wherever you like by inserting a text box. We're going to go over them in detail in a
later lesson, but while we're here, I thought I'd show you how to use the command. Just
go to the Insert tab, and click Text Box. Text boxes are especially useful if you ever
decide to use a blank slide that doesn't have placeholders.
Speaking of slides, I think I'd like to insert a couple more to finish building my presentation.
Where should we start? Let's go back to the Home tab. How about another section header
for the part of the presentation where we feature cats and other small pets? We can
click the top half of the New Slide command to quickly add a slide with the same layout
as the one I have selected. That's not really what I want, so I'm just going to delete this
slide by pressing Backspace or Delete on my keyboard. To insert a slide with a different
layout, I'm going to click the bottom half of the command. This opens the menu, where
I can choose the layout I want - in this case, Section Header.
Now I need to move this slide up a couple places - right before slide 7, where the section
on cats and other small pets begins. To move a slide, all you have to do is click and hold
it in the left pane, then drag where you want the slide to go. See that horizontal insertion
point? That marks where it's going to be moved when I release my mouse.
To quickly add slides for the rest of the pets we want to include, I'd like to try the
Copy & Paste method. This can really save you time when the slides you already have
are so similar to what you need. To copy and paste, select the slide you want to copy,
then click the Copy command. Now click in between or below the slide where you want
the copy to appear (another insertion point marks the spot) and go back to the Ribbon
to click Paste.
Creating presentations is easy once you know the secret to using placeholders, layouts,
and working with PowerPoint slides.