The “Backstage” display

The “Backstage” view is new in “PowerPoint” 2010.   “Backstage” view contains commands that you use to do things ‘with’ a file, while the commands in the “Ribbon” are the commands to do things ‘in’ a file.

 

Clicking on the “File” (1) button in the menu bar, which replaced the “Office” button in “PowerPoint” 2007, brings you to the “Backstage” view. When we click this button, we can see the “Backstage” view of the application.   At the top left column we have four buttons, “Save,” “Save As”, “Open” and “Close”. We will discuss these later.

 

When a presentation is opened and you click the “File” button, then the “Info” tab is selected by default in the “Backstage” view (2).

The “Info” tab displays information of the presentation which is listed on the right (3) and the options are shown in the middle (4). These options are to set “Permissions” (A), a tool to “Prepare for sharing” with third parties (B) and an option to manage “Versions” of the presentation (C).

 

If no presentation is open when you click the “File” button, the “Recent” tab is selected in the “Backstage” view.
Under the “Recent” tab, we find a list of recently opened presentations in the middle (A), and on the right, the recent locations where you saved the files (B).

By clicking on the “pin-icon” (2) next to the file, you can attach the file to the list. In this way, the file (3) moves to the top of the list even if you have 100 files open. The “pinned-icon” files will always appear at the top of the list of files. If you click the “pinned-icon” (3) again, it is removed from the list of frequently used files. The same goes for the “pin icons” next to the list of recent locations (4).

To delete a file from the list of recent presentations, or from the list of pinned files, right-click the file and choose the “Remove from list” option in the drop-down menu.

Note! When you delete a file from the list of recent presentations, you do not remove it from your computer but, just from this list.

 

Under the “Print” tab, we find the preview on the right side and a number of printing options in the center. I’ll tell you more about printing presentations in a later lesson.

 

 

Under the “Save and Send” tab, we can send the presentation via email or fax. You can save the presentation on the Internet and store it in “Sharepoint”.

You can change the file type to make it useful when your colleagues use an older version of “PowerPoint”. You can save the file in pdf format. You can make a video of your presentation and possibly upload to “Youtube”. We have many different options to save and share your presentation. You must select each option  to see the information that appears on the right side of the window (1).

 

The last thing I want to mention here is the “New” tab.  Under the “New” tab, we have the opportunity to start a “Blank presentation” (1) or choose from a template (2).  If you choose to start with a template, click the “Sample Template” (2) button to choose from templates supplied with “PowerPoint” or when you are connected to the Internet, you can download templates from the “Office.com” website (3 ).

We learned enough about the “Backstage” view. The rest, we’ll see when we use it.
To close the “Backstage” view, click any button on the toolbar.

Featured Courses

• Downloading iPad Apps
• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
• Lesson 65: File Formats