Office 2008 for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

Insert Menu

Use the commands in this menu to add things to your PowerPoint presentations or to individual slides.

New Slide

Creates a new slide after the selected slide. Keyboard shortcut: Shift-⌘-N.

Duplicate Slide

Duplicates the active slide; places the duplicate after that slide. Keyboard shortcut: Shift-⌘-D.

Slides From

• Slide Layout. Opens the Elements Gallery’s Slide Layouts tab so you can add a new layout to your presentation.

• Other Presentation. Lets you pull slides out of another PowerPoint file to insert into the currently active presentation.

• Outline File. Imports a Word outline and creates slides (and slide text) from it. Each first-level item is given its own new slide (see Using a Word Outline).

Slide Number

Adds the slide number to a text box on the active slide (not every slide—you’ll have to use a header or footer for that purpose).

Date and Time

Opens the “Header and Footer” window, which you can use to add the current date and time in one of several formats to the current slide. If you want to add the date and time to every slide, again, use a header or footer.

Symbol

Calls up the Object Palette, where you can choose a symbol character from any of the currently installed symbol fonts—or from the symbols contained in a normal font.

Comment

Inserts a comment into the currently active slide, as though it’s a “sticky note.”

Chart

Opens the Elements Gallery’s Charts tab so you can click a chart type to insert in your slide.

SmartArt Graphic

Opens the Elements Gallery’s SmartArt Graphics ...