Add a new “Slide”

Once you have added the title and subtitle in the first “Slide”, i.e. the “Title Slide”, you need to continue working on your presentation by adding a “New Slide”.

We find the “New Slide” under the “Home” tab in the “Ribbon”. This button has two parts. When you click on the upper part of the button (1), this will add a “New Slide” using the “Title and object” layout.

Why the “Title and object” layout?
Well, according to “Microsoft”, this is the most common layout after the “Title Slide”. If you need to know more about the different types of layouts of a “Slide”, please read the previous lesson.

If you want to use a different layout for your “Slide”, click the lower part of the “New Slide” (2).
This opens a drop-down menu with the nine different layouts which I had mentioned in the previous lesson.
Click the layout that you think best fits your presentation.

The “New Slide” is added after (3) the selected “Slide”.

Suppose you need to insert a “Slide” between “Slide” 2 and “Slide” 3, you first select “Slide” 2 and click the “Insert Slide” button in the “Ribbon”.

The “New Slide” will then be placed after the “Slide” 2.

 

Navigating with the Keyboard

As in most applications from “Microsoft”, we can also work with our keyboard to navigate between different parts of our presentation in “PowerPoint”.

“PowerPoint” is different from other applications when we want to use the keyboard so I will mention the various possibilities here.

 

On our keyboards, we have the arrows “Up”, “Down”, “Left” and “Right”, plus the keys “End”, “Pg Up” and “Pg Dn “.

These keys do one thing when we use them separately, and do another thing when we use them along with the “Ctrl” key on our keyboard.

 

When your cursor is blinking in a “Placeholder box” and you click the “Down” arrow on your keyboard, the cursor will be moved down by one line in your text. If you click the “Up” arrow, this will move the cursor up by one line.

Click the “Right” arrow, will move the cursor one character to the right within your text and click the “Left” arrow will move the cursor one character to the left in your text.

But when we press the Ctrl key and perform the same operations i.e, press the “Ctrl” and click the “Right” arrow, the cursor jumps by a whole word to the right.

Same for the “Left” arrow where, the cursor jumps an entire word to the left.

 

If you click the “Down” arrow while holding the “Ctrl” pressed, the cursor will jump down an entire paragraph and for the “Up” arrow, it jumps up an entire paragraph.

 

Just as a side note, a new paragraph is created whenever you press the “Enter” key on your keyboard. This happens when you insert the text in your “Placeholder box”.

If you click the “End” key on your keyboard, this will place the cursor at the end of the alignment.

Clicking the “Home” key on your keyboard, will move the cursor to the beginning of your line.

If you use these two keys along with the Ctrl key pressed, the cursor moves to the end or the beginning of your text in the “Placeholder box” respectively.

Another keyboard combination is “Ctrl” + “Enter” keys.
When you click this button, this will move the cursor from one “Placeholder box” to the other.
If you are in the last “Placeholder box” of your “Slide”, click again and press Ctrl + Enter, a “New Slide” is added to your presentation with the same “Slide Layout”.

The “Pg Up” and “Pg Dn” keys will take you to the next or previous “Slide” in your presentation.

If no boxes are selected in your “Slide”, when you click the “Ctrl” key and the Home key, it will bring you to the first “Slide” of your presentation.
Clicking the “Ctrl” key and “End” key will bring you to the last “Slide” of your presentation.

Navigating with the mouse

In “PowerPoint”, we have different ways to use the mouse to navigate between the different “Slides” .
At the left side in the “Status bar” at the bottom, shows you which “Slide” is selected, and how many “Slides” there are.
At the bottom right of the window we have two buttons with double arrows.
To navigate to the previous “Slide”, click the top button and to navigate to the next “Slide”, click the next button.

A second way to navigate around the presentation is to make use of the vertical scroll bar. Click and drag until you’ve reached the correct “Slide”. In a small box that appears, the “Slide” number and “Slide” title is displayed.

A third way is to click on the various “Slide” tabs that we find on the left side of the window.

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