Exploring PowerPoint's Outlining Features

PowerPoint's outlining features make it easy to create a well-organized presentation. Using the outline pane in Outline view or Normal view, you can create a basic outline as well as revise, rearrange, and reorganize it. The Outlining toolbar includes buttons that provide even more options and flexibility in outlining, such as the ability to collapse and expand your outline, design a summary slide, or display text formatting. And if you create outlines in other programs such as Word 2000, you can quickly import these into PowerPoint and automatically create a presentation.

In this chapter you learn about specific ways in which PowerPoint organizes your presentation, such as:

• How to organize your presentation You have several ways that you can organize a presentation in PowerPoint, depending on how you work best and whether you've already created an outline in another program.

• Exploring Outline View Both Outline view and Normal view display the outline pane, in which you can easily organize and rearrange your presentation.

• How to use the Outlining toolbar The Outlining toolbar enables you to promote and demote outline points as well as move, collapse, and expand them. You can also create a summary slide or display font formatting as well.

• Importing outlines from other programs If you create outlines in Word or another program, you can import them into PowerPoint. PowerPoint also imports other common file formats such as RTF and TXT.