Introduction

Below you will learn the keystrokes required to organise and manage your slides. You will also learn a few SuperNova and Dolphin ScreenReader hotkeys to help you perform these tasks.

Reading time: 5 minutes approx.

Working with slides

You use the Outline (Thumbnail) Pane to organise and manage your slides. The Outline (Thumbnail) Pane enables you to sort, delete, duplicate, and perform other organisational tasks on your slides.

You can move focus to the Outline (Thumbnail) Pane by pressing F6 or SHIFT + F6. The Outline (Thumbnail) Pane is situated before the Slide View Pane. You can use the Speak where am I? hotkey to verify your location. Speech will say "thumbnails" as part of the output when focus is in the pane.

 Tip: The Speak where am I? hotkey is NUMPAD 7 or, if you are using the Laptop Universal Hotkey Set, press CAPS LOCK + PAGE UP.

When focus is in the pane, you can use the UP ARROW and DOWN ARROW to move through the slides. As you select each slide, speech will announce the slide number and its content, and the Slide View Pane updates to show the slide.

The most popular actions you may want to perform on a slide are:

• Delete slide.
  You can delete a slide from your presentation by selecting the slide and then pressing the DELETE key. 
• Re-arrange slides.
  You can re-arrange your slides by using the standard cut and paste commands. You can also press LEFT CONTROL + UP ARROW and LEFT CONTROL + DOWN ARROW to shuffle your slides one position at a time. Alternatively, you can press LEFT CONTROL + LEFT SHIFT + UP ARROW to move the slide to the start of your presentation and LEFT CONTROL + LEFT SHIFT + DOWN ARROW to move the slide to the end of your presentation.

You can use the context menu (SHIFT + F10) to perform other tasks such as insert a slide, duplicate a slide, and hide a slide.

Change the slide size from widescreen to standard

You may need to change your slide settings to ensure your presentation appears correctly on screen. You can choose between widescreen and standard design.

Standard is almost square, with a 4:3 aspect ratio. If you're showing a PowerPoint presentation on an older projector, iPad, or tablet, you'll need a Standard template. For all others, including laptops, TV monitors, or modern projectors, you will need a Widescreen 16:9 template.

To make this change:

1. From the "Design" tab, select "Slide Size" (ALT + G, S).
2. In the Slide Size menu, select "Standard" or "Widescreen", depending on your requirements, and then press ENTER. A confirmation dialog box opens.
3. Do one of the following:
   • To maximise the size of your content, select "Maximise"”. If you have a lot of content on a slide, all the text might not fit on the slide when using this option.
   • To scale your content down to fit it on the slide, select "Ensure Fit". This option might resize your content to a smaller font size to fit everything on the slide.
4. When done, press ENTER.

Tip: You can make further adjustments to your slide by choosing "Custom" from the "Slide Size" command in the "Design" tab of the Ribbon (ALT + G, S, C). Options include changes to slide numbers and slide orientation.

Summary

In this section you discovered how to organise your slides. You learnt the keyboard commands that enable you to shuffle the position of your slides in your presentation and how you may change the size of your slide to accommodate your projector.

Quiz

1. You use the Outline (Thumbnail) Pane to organise your slides. Is this statement true?
2. Within the Outline (Thumbnail) Pane, you can use the cut and paste commands to reposition the slides in your presentation. Is this statement true?
3. You set the slide size to widescreen when presenting using a modern projector. Is this statement true?

End of section

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But before you move on, here are the answers to the quiz questions:

1. True.
2. True.
3. True.