Office X for Macintosh: The Missing Manual

chapter 15: basic powerpoint 575

Step 2: Writing the Outline

The built-in PowerPoint starter slide shows save you a few minutes of design effort,

but sooner or later you’ll actually have to write the words that will appear on your

slides. Outlining your presentation helps you organize your thoughts and write those

all-important words.

One great way to go about this is to use PowerPoint’s Outline view, which looks

much like Normal view except that the Outline pane is wider. You switch into Out-

line view by clicking the Outline View button near the bottom left of the main win-

dow.

Tip: You can use the secret of Outline view anytime the sluggishness of PowerPoint’s Normal view makes

you feel like you’re jogging through quicksand. It’s not sold in stores, not listed in the View menu; you get

to it by clicking the second tiny icon at the lower-left corner of the main window.

The Slide pane and Notes pane shrink a bit, but at least your typing won’t be shackled to a slug.

The basics of typing an outline are simple: Each slide icon at the left of the Outline

pane represents an individual slide. Whatever you type adjacent to the slide icon

becomes the corresponding slide’s title (see Figure 15-5).

Figure 15-4:

When you add a new slide to your

presentation, you’ll be presented with

the New Slide dialog box, from which

you can choose one of 24 different

layouts. These layouts make it easy to

add various elements to your slides

by providing placeholders for bullet

lists, charts, artwork, tables, and even

movies.

Step 1:

Specify a Design

576 office x for macintosh: the missing manual

To generate more outline text, you can:

• Press Return after typing a title to start another title. Each title corresponds to a

slide.

• Press Tab to demote a title into a bullet point under the previous title. If you

continue pressing Tab, you can continue the demotion, down to five levels below

the title. (Demote is outlining jargon for “make less important,” or “move down

one level in the outline.”)

• Press Shift-Tab to promote a bullet point into a more important bullet point or a

title. (Promote, as you might guess, means to “make more important,” or “move

up one level in the outline.”)

• Press Return after typing a bullet point to start another bullet point.

• Press Control-M after typing a bullet point to start a title for a new slide.

If you create more than an occasional PowerPoint show, you’ll make your life much

easier if you master a few of these key combinations:

Keystroke What it does

Tab Demotes a heading

Shift-Tab Promotes a heading

Return Creates a new heading at the same level

Figure 15-5:

You can drag topics or bullet

points into a different order

as you build your outline, just

by dragging a tiny slide or

bullet icon. A horizontal line

indicates where PowerPoint

thinks you want to place the

item when you release the

mouse. As you work on your

outline in the left-hand Outline

pane, you get to see the

matching slide in the Slide

pane.

Step 2:

Writing the Outline