Building a Presentation Outline in PowerPoint 2010
- 5/15/2010
- Understanding the Relationship of the Outline to Slides
- Working with the Outline
- Adding Text in the Outline Tab
- Working with Outline Contents
Adding Text in the Outline Tab
One of the benefits of the Outline tab is that it provides a fast way for you to enter text without having to deal with placeholders or graphics. After you enter the title, adding text to the outline consists of pressing Enter to create a new entry in the outline and then entering the text, which appears at the same outline level as the line before. You can then demote text to become a subheading (subtitle or bullet point) or promote a bullet point to become the next slide title.
Add a Slide Title
With the Outline tab selected in Normal view, click in the outline.
Enter some text, which is automatically formatted as a slide title, and press Enter. The slide title appears in both the outline and the Slide pane, and the cursor is in place to create the next slide title.
TIP
The first slide is always created using the Title Slide layout. There is typically only one title slide in a presentation, although you could duplicate it and place the duplicate at the end of your presentation. A title slide consists of a title and subtitle. After the first slide, other slides you insert use the layout of the slide that’s selected when you insert them by default.
SEE ALSO
For more information about slide layouts, see Understanding What Slide Layouts and Themes Control.
Promote and Demote Headings
Enter text in the Outline tab, or click in an existing line of text to select it.
Click the Home tab, and choose Decrease List Level or Increase List Level from the Paragraph group. Decrease demotes the heading; Increase promotes it to a higher level in the outline.
TIP
You can create many levels of indented bullets in an outline, but a couple of levels is usually the most you should ever have. As a rule, if you have that much detail to provide about a point, it really should be on a separate slide. Also, in the typical presentation environment, attendees can’t possibly see more than two levels of headings on the screen.
TIP
After you demote a heading to the bullet point level, when you press Enter to create the next heading, that heading is also at the bullet point level. When you’re ready to start the next slide, you can type a heading and then promote it to slide title level. You can also use a shortcut to do this: press Shift+Tab to promote a heading or Tab to demote it.
Try This!
In PowerPoint 2010, when you select text, a Mini toolbar containing the most commonly used text formatting tools appears. You can use the Promote and Demote buttons on the Mini toolbar to structure your outline.