Home | Tips and Tricks | PowerPoint | Working in outline view

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You can add information to your slides in a couple of ways. The most obvious method is to simply type on the slide itself. Click on any text box and start typing.

There is another way, however, and its called the “outline view” tab. Click on this tab (located in the left portion of the screen) and you will see an outline of all the text in your presentation. You can type and edit the text in this outline pane and it will magically appear on your slide.

When typing in the outline view, your text will appear in the title area of the current slide. When you hit Enter, you’ll create a new slide and you can begin typing again.

Here’s the tricky part. If you want to add text to the other areas of the slide (i.e. the main text area) you’ll have to learn to promote and demote text. Type some text in the outline, then go up to the top toolbar and find the “indent” buttons. When you click on these, your outline text will move around … becoming either titles, bulleted text, or sub-bulleted text. Try it!

Personally, I don’t find the outline view all that useful. It's much easier to type on the screen. However, some people really seem to like the outline view, as they can type up a presentation really fast using this method. I mainly use it to proof-read my presentation after it's completed, as it’s sometimes easier to read my text on a white outline than a colored slide.

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