Working with slides

Hello students, welcome to Kwickprep. You made twelve slides, and now the order looks wrong. One slide is extra, and one must appear twice. Do you start again? No. Today we will learn to work with slides: insert, select, copy, move, delete, hide and more.

First, where do we work with slides? In Normal view, the slide pane on the left shows a small picture, or thumbnail, of every slide. Slide Sorter view shows all slides together in a grid. You can switch between them on the View tab. Most slide actions work in either place.

Before any action, you select slides. To select one slide, just click its thumbnail. To select a range, click the first slide and Shift click the last. To pick separate slides, hold Ctrl and click each one. To select every slide, click in the pane and press Ctrl+A.

Let us insert slides. On the Home tab, click New Slide, or press Ctrl+M. The new slide appears just after the slide you selected. You can also bring in slides from another presentation, called reusing slides. Click the arrow under New Slide and choose Reuse Slides.

To duplicate means to make an exact copy of a slide. The copy is placed just after the original. Right click the thumbnail and choose Duplicate Slide. The shortcut is Ctrl+D. This is useful when many slides share the same design, like a quiz with ten questions.

You can also copy a slide to any place. Select the slide and press Ctrl+C. Click in the slide pane where the copy should go. Press Ctrl+V to paste it. This works even between two different presentations.

Now, moving slides to change their order. Drag the thumbnail up or down in the slide pane. A thin line shows where the slide will drop. You can also cut the slide with Ctrl+X and paste it in the new place with Ctrl+V. For big changes, Slide Sorter view is easiest, because you see every slide.

Next, deleting slides. To delete a slide, select it and press the Delete key. You can also right click it and choose Delete Slide. If you delete a slide by mistake, press Ctrl+Z to undo. Check your slides once more before you save.

Sometimes you want to keep a slide but not show it today. Right click the slide and choose Hide Slide. The slide stays in the file, but it is skipped during the slide show. In the slide pane, its number appears crossed out and the thumbnail looks faded. Click Hide Slide again to bring it back.

You can also change a slide's layout after making it. On the Home tab, click Layout and pick another one. Your content moves into the new placeholders. If you moved boxes around by mistake, Reset puts the placeholders back to the original design. For long files, sections let you group slides under a name, like Introduction.

Let us collect the shortcuts in one place. Ctrl+M adds a new slide. Ctrl+D duplicates the selected slide. Ctrl+X and then Ctrl+V moves a slide. The Delete key removes a selected slide. And Ctrl+Z undoes your last action.

Pause and predict. A talk has eight slides, and slide five is hidden. You press F5 and keep clicking to the next slide. What comes right after slide four? Slide six, because the hidden slide five is skipped.

Let us revise what we learned today. Select slides with a click, Shift click, Ctrl click or Ctrl+A. Ctrl+M adds a slide, and Ctrl+D duplicates one. Drag thumbnails or cut and paste to change the order. Hide Slide keeps a slide in the file but skips it in the show. Open any presentation and practise each action once.