Adding a new “Slide”

Once you have added the title and subtitle in the first “Slide” i.e, the “Title Slide”, you need to continue creating 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” with the “Title and Content” layout.

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

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

Select the layout, that you deem fit for your presentation.

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

For example, you have 8 slides in your presentation, and you wish to insert a “Slide” between “Slide” 2 and “Slide” 3, first select “Slide” 2 and click on 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 use our keyboard to navigate between the different parts of our presentation, in “PowerPoint”.
The usage of the keyboard in “PowerPoint” is different from other applications, so I will just discuss the various options here.

On our keyboard, we have the “Up”, “Down”, “Left” and “Right” arrows, along with the “End”, “Pg Up” and “Pg Dn ” keys.
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 press the “Down” arrow on your keyboard, the cursor will be moved down by one line in your text.
If you press the “Up” arrow, this will move the cursor up by one line.
Pressing the “Right” arrow, will move the cursor one character to the right in your text and pressing the “Left” arrow will move the cursor one character to the left in your text.
You might say its nothing new.
You’re right.
But when we press the Ctrl key and perform the same operations i.e, pressing the “Ctrl” and the “Right” arrow keys, the cursor jumps by a whole word to the right.
This is the same for the “Left” arrow where, the cursor jumps by an entire word to the left.

If you press the “Down” arrow while holding the “Ctrl” pressed, the cursor will move down by an entire paragraph and for the “Up” arrow, it moves up by an entire paragraph but, I think you already knew that.

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

If you click on the “End” key on your keyboard, the cursor will be placed at the end of the alignment.
Pressing the “Home” key on your keyboard, will move the cursor to the beginning of your line.
If you press these two keys along with the Ctrl key, the cursor moves to the end or the beginning of your text into the “Placeholder box” respectively.

Another keyboard combination is “Ctrl” + “Enter”.
When you use this short cut, 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, then 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 there is no indication in your “Slide” that any boxes are selected, when you click the “Ctrl” key and the Home key, it will bring you to the first “Slide” of your presentation.
Pressing the “Ctrl” 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” .
In the bottom left portion of the “Staus bar”, the “Slide” that is selected is displayed, and the number of “Slides” that are present. At the bottom right portion 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 is to make use of the vertical scroll bar. Click and drag it until you’ve reached the correct “Slide”. In a small box that appears, the “Slide” number and title are displayed.

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

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