Outline Pane Options in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Introducing the Slides/Outline Pane
Outline Pane Options

Introducing the Slides/Outline Pane

The Slides/Outline pane in PowerPoint 2011 has already been explained in a previous tutorial. This page builds on it, and explores the various outline options available in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. This pane looks and works almost the same as it does in previous versions of PowerPoint for Mac. As shown in Figure 1, the Slides/Outline pane is normally placed on the left side of the interface. In Figure 1, the Slides pane is visible. To get to the Outline pane, all you need to do is click the Outline tab.

Figure 1: Slide/Outline pane

Outline Pane Options

The Outline tab typically displays the title and text content of the slides, as shown in Figure 2 (all content that's part of your text placeholders).

Figure 2: Outline tab selected

Getting back to the outline, you can use the Outline Pane to:

• Cut, copy, and paste text
• Insert, duplicate, and delete slides
• Collapse and expand slides
• Activate the Outlining Toolbar

Whatever you might need to do, the first thing you have to do is to select the text for which you want to effect a change. Thereafter, with the text still selected, right click anywhere in the Outline Pane to bring up the options in the context menu, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Context menu in the Outline pane

These options are explained below:

Cut / Copy / Paste: Any selected text in the Outline can be cut or copied, and thereafter pasted in another segment of the Outline, in the same presentation, or even in another open presentation. The shortcut keys (also shown in Figure 3) are ⌘+X, ⌘+C, and ⌘+V, and they work for Cut, Copy, and Paste respectively.

New Slide: Inserts a new slide in the Outline Pane at the point where you right-click to activate the context menu shown in Figure 3. If you select slide 2, and choose this option, PowerPoint will insert a new slide after slide 2 in the slide 3 position.

Duplicate Slide: This option is used to insert a duplicate of the slide. If you select slide 2, and choose this option, PowerPoint will insert a duplicate of slide 2 at the slide 3 position.

Delete Slide: Use this option to delete the selected slide. PowerPoint doesn't warn you that the selected slide will be deleted, so use this option with caution.

Collapse / Collapse All: This option hides the bulleted text, so that only the titles of individual slides are visible. Choosing this option opens a submenu (see Figure 4) with two options: Collapse hides the bulleted text relevant to the selected slide (or active slide) whereas Collapse All hides the bulleted text for the Outline of the entire presentation (see Figure 5).

Figure 4: Collapse All

Figure 5: Collapsed view of all the slides in the Outline pane

Expand / Expand All: This is the reverse option for Collapse / Collapse All explained in the preceding section, it displays all the hidden bulleted text. Clicking this option reveals a submenu (see Figure 6) with two options: Expand reveals the bulleted text relevant to the selected slide (or active slide) whereas Expand All reveals the bulleted text for the Outline of the entire presentation (see Figure 7).

Figure 6: Expand All

Figure 7: Expanded view of all the slides in the Outline pane

Hyperlink: This option allows you to add a hyperlink to any selected text in Outline tab. Personally, we prefer doing this sort of stuff on the slide itself rather than the outline, but that's just my opinion.

The rest of the options are accessed through the Outline Toolbar, these are Increase Indent, Decrease Indent, Move Up, and Move Down. Explore these options in our Advanced Outline Pane Options in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac tutorial.

Continued on Page 2