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The Structure of a PowerPoint Presentation

Let's start by getting familiar with PowerPoint terms and then try creating and editing a new presentation. This page introduces some basic operations, which you will learn more about later. Now the goal is for you to become familiar with the following concepts:

Themes
Designer
Slide placeholders

You will also learn:

To move slides
To change the structure of the slides (we use structures called Two Content and Title and Content)

The Objective

At the end of completing the task on this page, you will have created the file PowerPoint_Exercise.pptx, containing one slide using a structure called Title and Content. To get there, though, we will be taking an educational detour, so it’s recommended to finish all the exercises thoroughly.

Info: Terms of Powerpoint

When creating a new PowerPoint presentation, one always uses a base (template or theme), where the page size (slide), fonts, colors, bullet points, and the layout/structure are predefined.

A theme only determines the appearance of a presentation, while a template may have different predefined pages (slides).

It's essential to get familiar with the terms because most misunderstandings in collaboration happen due to the use of different terms when talking about the same thing.

Task: Start PowerPoint and create a new presentation

Choose the base for your presentation from the pre-made templates. Save the presentation you created to your chosen location on your computer, and name it "PowerPoint_Exercise.pptx", for example. We went through the subject of saving a PowerPoint presentation in the Preliminary Information chapter.

Task: Use Designer to choose the appearance of the Title page

After choosing an appearance for your presentation, it might, for example, look like this.

Task: Change the theme of your presentation to an Office Theme

Next, we will ensure that the structure of the presentation is sound and set the theme to Office Theme.

Task: Add a new 'Two Content' -slide

Slides are pages of a PowerPoint presentation. When you add a new slide, choose the Two Content layout.

Example:

Info: Placeholders

The slides have predefined placeholders for different types of content, texts, images, diagrams, tables, etc. To make the slide follow the layout of the presentation, the content is added to these placeholders.

There is also no need to format, e.g., text separately, but the idea is to follow the formatting of the chosen theme. Visuality and placement of content is an integral part in terms of the readability of presentations. With the help of predefined placeholders, you ensure that the basic principles related to these matters will also hold in your presentation.

Paikkamerkin keskellä olevia painikkeita käyttämällä voidaan helposti lisätä tietoa

Task: Reorder the slides and then delete the title slide

The slides of your presentation are visible in the panel on the left of your screen. Move Two Content to the top, and then delete the Title Slide which now appears under the Two Content.

Example:

Task: Change the layout of a slide

Change the layout of a slide to Title and Content.

Example:

Info: Restoring the original layout

If you have changed the appearance of the text or content in the placeholders of your slide, you can restore all the changes to follow the guidelines of the theme by navigating to **Home** tab, and clicking on the **Reset** button in the **Slides** group.

Accessibility and PowerPoint

Accessibility

What is your presentation for?

A PowerPoint presentation can be presented to a large group of people by displaying it in a large size. On the other hand, it can be viewed by the user themselves on their device. The intermediate form of these is that such viewing is shared with others, for example, on a video call. Different presentation methods involve various accessibility issues, and the intended use of the presentation has a lot to do with the creation phase.

An independent presentation

If the primary purpose is for the user to view the presentation independently, it must be designed as a document containing everything necessary. There is a lot of detail and straightforward text. In this case, accessibility rules are much the same as for Word documents. In addition, each slide should have a clear title that reflects its contents.

In the Review tab of the group Accessibility group, there is a button Check Accessibility, which points out important things to consider if your presentation is made for individual and independent watching.

To support a spoken presentation

However, it is more common for a PowerPoint presentation to be a visual support for a verbal presentation. In that case, it cannot and should not be independent. It should show the presentation’s main points in an illustrative way, and the included texts should be short - if there is any text at all.

In a Word document, things can be presented as a list, the items on it consisting of short sentences. Among the sentences, a few keywords should be highlighted, for example, by bolding. A suitable way to turn this idea into a PowerPoint presentation would be a show of those highlighted keywords, supported, for instance, by pictures and graphs.

In a PowerPoint presentation that supports a verbal presentation, the font size should be quite large so that people can also follow it with low vision or from a distance. The suitable general size of a font is 32 points. The texts should be short for this reason, and so even slower readers have time to understand what they're reading. The contrast between the text and the background is also important. If the background of the text is a picture, it should not disturb the reading or break the characters of the words.

Check the accessibility

Like in Word and Excel, Check Accessibility function investigates accessibility issues. You can find it on the Review tab, in the Accessibility group. The Check Accessibility function notes if for example graphic objects are missing their alternative text descriptions. The function also notes if there are troubles with the reading order of the presentation, and in the group, you can choose Reading Order Pane to check the reading order and change it, if necessary.

The Accessibility check-up also notes slides without a clear title and offers you an option to add one – either visible or hidden. The hidden title is not visible on the slide, but only when navigating to the View tab and using the Outline View function of the group Presentation Views. Outline View is useful for people with low vision and everyone who could use a summary of the presentation in text form.

The mentioned revisions are relevant when the PowerPoint file is used as an independent presentation. Instead, other means are needed to check the presentation used to support the speech. One helpful way to check is to watch the presentation from a distance. If everything is not easy to read, shrink the text or spread it over several pages to use a larger font.

Great! You have now finished the first chapter of the PowerPoint course. You should now be able to handle new slides and their layouts and themes. Next, we will look into adding content to your presentation - text being the first thing to look at.

Are you ready?

Mark as complete: