how to create a new presentation from a blank slide

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Step-by-Step)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• January 22, 2024

In this beginner’s guide, you will learn step-by-step how to make a PowerPoint presentation from scratch.

While PowerPoint is designed to be intuitive and accessible, it can be overwhelming if you’ve never gotten any training on it before. As you progress through this guide, you’ll will learn how to move from blank slides to PowerPoint slides that look like these.

Table of Contents

Additionally, as you create your presentation, you’ll also learn tricks for working more efficiently in PowerPoint, including how to:

• Change the slide order
• Reset your layout
• Change the slide dimensions
• Use PowerPoint Designer
• Format text
• Format objects
• Play a presentation (slide show)

With this knowledge under your belt, you’ll be ready to start creating PowerPoint presentations. Moreover, you’ll have taken your skills from beginner to proficient in no time at all. I will also include links to more advanced PowerPoint topics.

Ready to start learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation?

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start with a blank presentation.

Note: Before you open PowerPoint and start creating your presentation, make sure you’ve collected your thoughts. If you’re going to make your slides compelling, you need to spend some time brainstorming.

For help with this, see our article with tips for nailing your business presentation  here .

The first thing you’ll need to do is to open PowerPoint. When you do, you are shown the Start Menu , with the Home tab open.

This is where you can choose either a blank theme (1) or a pre-built theme (2). You can also choose to open an existing presentation (3).

For now, go ahead and click on the  Blank Presentation (1)  thumbnail.

Doing so launches a brand new and blank presentation for you to work with. Before you start adding content to your presentation, let’s first familiarize ourselves with the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint interface

Here is how the program is laid out:

• The Application Header
• The Ribbon (including the Ribbon tabs)
• The Quick Access Toolbar (either above or below the Ribbon)
• The Slides Pane (slide thumbnails)

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

• The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

Each one of these areas has options for viewing certain parts of the PowerPoint environment and formatting your presentation.

Below are the important things to know about certain elements of the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint Ribbon

The Ribbon is contextual. That means that it will adapt to what you’re doing in the program.

For example, the Font, Paragraph and Drawing options are greyed out until you select something that has text in it, as in the example below (A).

Furthermore, if you start manipulating certain objects, the Ribbon will display additional tabs, as seen above (B), with more commands and features to help you work with those objects. The following objects have their own additional tabs in the Ribbon which are hidden until you select them:

• Online Pictures
• Screenshots
• Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

This is where you can preview and rearrange all the slides in your presentation.

Right-clicking on a slide  in the pane gives you additional options on the slide level that you won’t find on the Ribbon, such as  Duplicate Slide ,  Delete Slide , and  Hide Slide .

In addition, you can add sections to your presentation by  right-clicking anywhere in this Pane  and selecting  Add Section . Sections are extremely helpful in large presentations, as they allow you to organize your slides into chunks that you can then rearrange, print or display differently from other slides.

The Slide Area (A) is where you will build out your slides. Anything within the bounds of this area will be visible when you present or print your presentation.

Anything outside of this area (B) will be hidden from view. This means that you can place things here, such as instructions for each slide, without worrying about them being shown to your audience.

The  Notes Pane  is the space beneath the Slide Area where you can type in the speaker notes for each slide. It’s designed as a fast way to add and edit your slides’ talking points.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about adding, printing, and exporting your PowerPoint speaker notes, read our guide here .

Your speaker notes are visible when you print your slides using the Notes Pages option and when you use the Presenter View . To expand your knowledge and learn the ins and outs of using the Presenter View , read our guide here .

You can resize the  Notes Pane  by clicking on its edge and dragging it up or down (A). You can also minimize or reopen it by clicking on the Notes button in the Status Bar (B).

Note:  Not all text formatting displays in the Notes Pane, even though it will show up when printing your speaker notes. To learn more about printing PowerPoint with notes, read our guide here .

Now that you have a basic grasp of the PowerPoint interface at your disposal, it’s time to make your presentation.

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Notice that in the Slide Area , there are two rectangles with dotted outlines. These are called  Placeholders  and they’re set on the template in the Slide Master View .

To expand your knowledge and learn how to create a PowerPoint template of your own (which is no small task), read our guide here .

As the prompt text suggests, you can click into each placeholder and start typing text. These types of placeholder prompts are customizable too. That means that if you are using a company template, it might say something different, but the functionality is the same.

Note:  For the purposes of this example, I will create a presentation based on the content in the Starbucks 2018 Global Social Impact Report, which is available to the public on their website.

If you type in more text than there is room for, PowerPoint will automatically reduce its font size. You can stop this behavior by clicking on the  Autofit Options  icon to the left of the placeholder and selecting  Stop Fitting Text to this Placeholder .

Next, you can make formatting adjustments to your text by selecting the commands in the Font area and the  Paragraph area  of the  Home  tab of the Ribbon.

The Reset Command:  If you make any changes to your title and decide you want to go back to how it was originally, you can use the Reset button up in the Home tab .

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

Now that you have your title slide filled in, it’s time to add more slides. To do that, simply go up to the  Home tab  and click on  New Slide . This inserts a new slide in your presentation right after the one you were on.

You can alternatively hit Ctrl+M on your keyboard to insert a new blank slide in PowerPoint. To learn more about this shortcut, see my guide on using Ctrl+M in PowerPoint .

Instead of clicking the New Slide command, you can also open the New Slide dropdown to see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template. Depending on who created your template, your layouts in this dropdown can be radically different.

If you insert a layout and later want to change it to a different layout, you can use the Layout dropdown instead of the New Slide dropdown.

After inserting a few different slide layouts, your presentation might look like the following picture. Don’t worry that it looks blank, next we will start adding content to your presentation.

If you want to follow along exactly with me, your five slides should be as follows:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Picture with Caption

Adding Content to Your Slides

Now let’s go into each slide and start adding our content. You’ll notice some new types of placeholders.

On slide 2 we have a  Content Placeholder , which allows you to add any kind of content. That includes:

• A SmartArt graphic,
• A 3D object,
• A picture from the web,
• Or an icon.

To insert text, simply type it in or hit  Ctrl+C to Copy  and Ctrl+V to Paste  from elsewhere. To insert any of the other objects, click on the appropriate icon and follow the steps to insert it.

For my example, I’ll simply type in some text as you can see in the picture below.

Slides 3 and 4 only have text placeholders, so I’ll go ahead and add in my text into each one.

On slide 5 we have a Picture Placeholder . That means that the only elements that can go into it are:

• A picture from the web

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

• Click on the  Picture  icon
• Find  a picture on your computer and select it
• Click on  Insert

Alternatively, if you already have a picture open somewhere else, you can select the placeholder and paste in (shortcut: Ctrl+V ) the picture. You can also drag the picture in from a file explorer window.

If you do not like the background of the picture you inserted onto your slide, you can remove the background here in PowerPoint. To see how to do this, read my guide here .

Placeholders aren’t the only way to add content to your slides. At any point, you can use the Insert tab to add elements to your slides.

You can use either the Title Only  or the  Blank  slide layout to create slides for content that’s different. For example, a three-layout content slide, or a single picture divider slide, as shown below.

In the first example above, I’ve inserted 6 text boxes, 3 icons, and 3 circles to create this layout. In the second example, I’ve inserted a full-sized picture and then 2 shapes and 2 text boxes.

The Reset Command:  Because these slides are built with shapes and text boxes (and not placeholders), hitting the  Reset button up in the  Home tab  won’t do anything.

That is a good thing if you don’t want your layouts to adjust. However, it does mean that it falls on you to make sure everything is aligned and positioned correctly.

For more on how to add and manipulate the different objects in PowerPoint, check out our step-by-step articles here:

• Using graphics in PowerPoint
• Inserting icons onto slides
• Adding pictures to your PowerPoint
• How to embed a video in PowerPoint
• How to add music to your presentation

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

If you have Office 365, your version of PowerPoint comes with a new feature called Designer (or Design Ideas). This is a feature that generates slide layout ideas for you. The coolest thing about this feature is that it uses the content you already have.

To use Designer , simply navigate to the  Design tab  in your Ribbon, and click on  Design Ideas .

NOTE: If the PowerPoint Designer is not working for you (it is grey out), see my troubleshooting guide for Designer .

Change the Overall Design (optional)

When you make a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll want to think about the overall design. Now that you have some content in your presentation, you can use the Design tab to change the look and feel of your slides.

For additional help thinking through the design of your presentation,  read my guide here .

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

If you have PowerPoint 2013 or later, when you create a blank document in PowerPoint, you automatically start with a widescreen layout with a 16:9 ratio. These dimensions are suitable for most presentations as they match the screens of most computers and projectors.

However, you do have the option to change the dimensions.

For example, your presentation might not be presented, but instead converted into a PDF or printed and distributed. In that case, you can easily switch to the standard dimensions with a 4:3 ratio by selecting from the dropdown (A).

You can also choose a custom slide size or change the slide orientation from landscape to portrait in the Custom Slide Size dialog box (B).

To learn all about the different PowerPoint slide sizes, and some of the issues you will face when changing the slide size of a non-blank presentation,  read my guide here .

 B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

The next thing you can do is change the theme of your presentation to a pre-built one. For a detailed explanation of what a PowerPoint theme is, and how to best use it,  read my article here .

In the beginning of this tutorial, we started with a blank presentation, which uses the default Office theme as you can see in the picture below.

That gives you the most flexibility because it has a blank background and quite simple layouts that work for most presentations. However, it also means that it’s your responsibility to enhance the design.

If you’re comfortable with this, you can stay with the default theme or create your own custom theme ( read my guide here ). But if you would rather not have to think about design, then you can choose a pre-designed theme.

Microsoft provides 46 other pre-built themes, which include slide layouts, color variants and palettes, and fonts. Each one varies quite significantly, so make sure you look through them carefully.

To select a different theme, go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon, and click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Themes section .

For this tutorial, let’s select the  Frame  theme and then choose the third Variant in the theme. Doing so changes the layout, colors, and fonts of your presentation.

Note: The theme dropdown area is also where you can import or save custom themes. To see my favorite places to find professional PowerPoint templates and themes (and recommendations for why I like them), read my guide here .

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

The next thing to decide is how you want your background to look for the entire presentation. In the  Variants area, you can see four background options.

For this example, we want our presentation to have a dark background, so let’s select Style 3. When you do so, you’ll notice that:

• The background color automatically changes across all slides
• The color of the text on most of the slides automatically changes to white so that it’s visible on the dark background
• The colors of the objects on slides #6 and #7 also adjust, in a way we may not want (we’ll likely have to make some manual adjustments to these slides)

Note: If you want to change the slide background for just that one slide, don’t left-click the style. Instead, right-click it and select Apply to Selected Slides .

After you change the background for your entire presentation, you can easily adjust the background for an individual slide.

Inside the Format Background pane, you can see you have the following options:

• Gradient fill
• Picture or texture fill
• Pattern fill
• Hide background

You can explore these options to find the PowerPoint background that best fits your presentation.

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

Another thing you may want to adjust in your presentation, is the color scheme. In the picture below you can see the Theme Colors we are currently using for this presentation.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own color palette. By default, the Office theme includes the Office color palette. This affects the colors you are presented with when you format any element within your presentation (text, shapes, SmartArt, etc.).

The good news is that the colors here are easy to change. To switch color palettes, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab in the Ribbon
• In the Variants area, click on the  dropdown arrow  and select  Colors
• Select  the color palette (or theme colors) you want

You can choose among the pre-built color palettes from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

As you build your presentation, make sure you use the colors from your theme to format objects. That way, changing the color palette adjusts all the colors in your presentation automatically.

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

Just as we changed the color palette, you can do the same for the fonts.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own font combination. By default, the Office theme includes the Office font pairing. This affects the fonts that are automatically assigned to all text in your presentation.

The good news is that the font pairings are easy to change. To switch your Theme Fonts, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Variants  area
• Select  Fonts
• Select  the font pairing you want

You can choose among the pre-built fonts from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

If you are working with PowerPoint presentations on both Mac and PC computers, make sure you choose a safe PowerPoint font. To see a list of the safest PowerPoint fonts, read our guide here .

If you receive a PowerPoint presentation and the wrong fonts were used, you can use the Replace Fonts dialog box to change the fonts across your entire presentation. For details, read our guide here .

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

The final step to make a PowerPoint presentation compelling, is to consider using animations and transitions. These are by no means necessary to a good presentation, but they may be helpful in your situation.

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust animations engine designed to power your creativity. That being said, it’s also easy to get started with basic animations.

Animations are movements that you can apply to individual objects on your slide.

To add a PowerPoint animation to an element of your slide, simply:

• Select the  element
• Go to the  Animations tab in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  animation  you want

You can add animations to multiple objects at one time by selecting them all first and then applying the animation.

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

• Click on the Preview button in the Animations tab
• Click on the little star  next to the slide
• Play the slide in Slide Show Mode

To learn other ways to run your slide show, see our guide on presenting a PowerPoint slide show with shortcuts .

To adjust the settings of your animations, explore the options in the  Effect Options ,  Advanced Animation  and the  Timing  areas of the  Animation tab .

Note:  To see how to make objects appear and disappear in your slides by clicking a button,  read our guide here .

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

The best way to manage lots of animations on your slide is with the Animation Pane . To open it, simply:

• Navigate to the  Animations tab
• Select the  Animation Pane

Inside the Animation Pane, you’ll see all of the different animations that have been applied to objects on your slide, with their numbers marked as pictured above.

Note: To see examples of PowerPoint animations that can use in PowerPoint, see our list of PowerPoint animation tutorials here .

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust transition engine so that you can dictate how your slides change from one to the other. It is also extremely easy to add transitions to your slides.

In PowerPoint, transitions are the movements (or effects) you see as you move between two slides.

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

• Select the  slide
• Go to the  Transitions tab in the Ribbon
• In the Transitions to This Slide area, click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  transition  you want

To adjust the settings of the transition, explore the options in the  Timing  area of the Transitions tab.

You can also add the same transition to multiple slides. To do that, select them in the  Slides Pane  and apply the transition.

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview your PowerPoint transitions (just like your animations):

• Click on the Preview  button in the Transitions tab
• Click on the little star  beneath the slide number in the thumbnail view

Note:  In 2016, PowerPoint added a cool new transition, called Morph. It operates a bit differently from other transitions. For a detailed tutorial on how to use the cool Morph transition,  see our step-by-step article here .

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

After you’ve built your presentation and made all the adjustments to your slides, you’ll want to save your presentation. YOu can do this several different ways.

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

• Navigate to the  File tab
•  Select  Save As  on the left
• Choose  where you want to save your presentation
• Name  your presentation and/or adjust your file type settings
• Click  Save

You can alternatively use the  Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save your presentation. I recommend using this shortcut frequently as you build your presentation to make sure you don’t lose any of your work.

This is the standard way to save a presentation. However, there may be a situation where you want to save your presentation as a different file type.

To learn how to save your presentation as a PDF, see our guide on converting PowerPoint to a PDF .

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

Once you’ve created a presentation that you like, you may want to turn it into a template. The easiest – but not technically correct – way, is to simply create a copy of your current presentation and then change the content.

But be careful! A PowerPoint template is a special type of document and it has its own parameters and behaviors.

If you’re interested in learning about how to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch, see our guide on how to create a PowerPoint template .

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

After finishing your PowerPoint presentation, you may want to print it out on paper. Printing your slides is relatively easy.

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

• Hit Ctrl+P on your keyboard
• Or go to the Ribbon and click on File and then Print

Inside the Print dialog box, you can choose from the various printing settings:

• Printer: Select a printer to use (or print to PDF or OneNote)
• Slides: Choose which slides you want to print
• Layout: Determine how many slides you want per page (this is where you can print the notes, outline, and handouts)
• Collated or uncollated (learn what collated printing means here )
• Color: Choose to print in color, grayscale or black & white

There are many more options for printing your PowerPoint presentations. Here are links to more in-depth articles:

• How to print multiple slides per page
• How to print your speaker notes in PowerPoint
• How to save PowerPoint as a picture presentation

So that’s how to create a PowerPoint presentation if you are brand new to it. We’ve also included a ton of links to helpful resources to boost your PowerPoint skills further.

When you are creating your presentation, it is critical to first focus on the content (what you are trying to say) before getting lost inserting and playing with elements. The clearer you are on what you want to present, the easier it will be to build it out in PowerPoint.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our PowerPoint training courses and other presentation resources by  visiting us here .

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Creating and Saving a New Presentation

Locked lesson.

• Lesson resources Resources
• Quick reference Reference

About this lesson

Let's create our first new presentation using a blank template. We'll learn how to save presentations locally and to the cloud, and understand how this determines how the presentation is saved going forward.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Quick reference

A fundemental skill in PowerPoint is knowing how to create a new blank presentation and save it to a folder. Blank presentations by default contain one slide with no placeholders, text or other graphical elements. It provides a blank canvas from which to design a slide deck. 

All presentations should be saved to a local folder, a network drive or into cloud storage. This ensures that any changes we make are saved and the liklihood of losing work is reduced. Presentations saved to the cloud automatically save and synchronize as you work. As a general rule, most presentations we create are saved with the default .pptx file extension. 

When to use

We will need to create and save a new blank presentation when we want to design a slide deck from scratch.

Instructions

Create a new blank presentation.

New blank presentations can be created in a few ways: from the File menu, using a keyboard shortcut or from the Quick Access Toolbar. 

From the File Menu

• Click the File tab. 
• Click New . 
• Choose Blank Presentation . 

Using a Keyboard Shortcut

• Press CTRL+N . 

From the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)

• Click the New button on the Quick Access Toolbar. 

Design Ideas

When we create a new presentation, the Design Ideas pane will show on the right-hand side. The Design Ideas feature examines the contents of the selected slide and offers a variety of design choices based on the layout and content.  

To apply a design to a slide, simply select one from the list and click to apply. 

Switch between Presentations

If you are working on more than one presentation at any time, its beneficial to know how to switch between them efficiently. PowerPoint will only display one presentation at a time in the window. 

• Click the View tab. 
• In the Window group, click Switch Windows .
• Choose the presentation to switch to from the list. 

Save a Presentation

Presentations can be saved to a local folder on our PC, a network drive, an external storage device or in the cloud.

Save a Presentation to Cloud Storage

Presentations saved into a cloud storage application like OneDrive are automatically saved and synchronised as we work. This means we only need to save the presentation once at the beginning and any changes made from that point on are automatically saved. 

• Click Save As . 
• Click Browse and choose a folder. 
• Choose a meaningful name for the presentation and type it into the File name field. 
• Verify the Save as type is set to PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx). 
• Click Save . 

Once saved, check the AutoSave slider is toggled on in the Quick Access Toolbar to ensure any changes made are automatically saved and synchronised to the cloud.

Save a Presentation to a local folder on our PC

Presentations saved to a local folder do not automatically save as we work. This means we need to ensure that we save at regular intervals. 

• Click Save .

Remember to save your work at regular intervals. Click the Save icon on the Quick Access Toolbar, or select Save from the File menu. Alternatively, we can use the keyboard shortcut, CTRL+S . 

Close a Presentation

A common mistake people make when working in PowerPoint is closing down the application when they meant to close down the current presentation. If we click the X in the top right-hand corner of the PowerPoint window, the application and all open presentations will close. 

To close just the current presentation but leave PowerPoint open, click the File tab and Close . 

Hints & tips

• To make saving into OneDrive easier from within PowerPoint, click the File tab, Save A s and then Add a place . Select your OneDrive account (if you have one). 
• The Design Ideas pane will pop open automatically when we create a new presentation. We can suppress this through PowerPoint Options. Click the File tab, Options and select the General page. Scroll down to the PowerPoint Designer section and remove the tick from the Automatically show me design ideas box.   
• 00:04 Now we're a bit more familiar with the PowerPoint interface.
• 00:07 It's time for us to delve into the subject of creating and saving presentations.
• 00:12 Now currently on the screen I have opened my first presentation.
• 00:16 If you recall, this was just a blank presentation that I saved into a folder.
• 00:21 And I want to start out just by reiterating a really important point when
• 00:25 it comes to closing down presentations.
• 00:28 Something I see people doing all the time is jumping up to the cross in the top
• 00:32 right-hand corner, and clicking it in order to close down the presentation.
• 00:38 But what you'll find is that if you do click on this cross,
• 00:41 it's going to close down all of PowerPoint.
• 00:43 So that is any presentations that you have open as well as the entire application.
• 00:49 No, it might be that that is exactly what you want to do.
• 00:51 And in that case, it's absolutely fine to click on that cross.
• 00:55 However, if you just want to close down the presentation that you currently have
• 01:00 on the screen, you need to go about this in a slightly different way.
• 01:04 So I'm going to close this down, I'm going to jump up to File, and
• 01:08 you'll see halfway down at the bottom here, I have a closed option.
• 01:13 When I click that, it's just going to close down that open presentation, but
• 01:17 it's still going to leave PowerPoint open.
• 01:19 So I can then go in, open up something else, or create a new presentation.
• 01:24 Which moves us nicely on to our next subject,
• 01:27 and that is creating a new presentation from scratch.
• 01:31 Now there are a few different ways that you can do this.
• 01:34 If we jump back into that file tab and go down to new,
• 01:38 this shows us all of the different ways that we can create new slide decks.
• 01:44 And the two options that you really have are you can create a new blank
• 01:48 presentation from scratch, or
• 01:50 you can create a new presentation based off of a template.
• 01:54 We're going to talk a lot more about what these templates are, how you access them,
• 01:58 and how they work in the next lesson.
• 02:01 For now, I simply want to focus on creating a new blank presentation.
• 02:06 So what I could do here is just click on Blank presentation.
• 02:11 It's going to open in PowerPoint, and
• 02:13 it's also going to pop open that design ideas pane.
• 02:17 As I mentioned previously, design ideas is there to allow
• 02:20 you to quickly add some pizzazz to your presentation.
• 02:24 So for example, if I scroll through these design ideas,
• 02:27 I might find one that I like and select it.
• 02:30 And with just one click, I've been able to style up that title page very effectively.
• 02:36 Now the design ideas that you see in here changed depending on the slide layout that
• 02:41 you're using.
• 02:42 Now, I know that terminology isn't too familiar to you at the moment, but
• 02:46 it will be when we get on to the topic of slide layouts.
• 02:49 But just be aware that what you see in the design ideas pane changes depending on
• 02:54 the layout of your slide.
• 02:56 Now I'm going to close down this pane simply by clicking on the cross.
• 02:59 Now that isn't the only way that I can create a new presentation in PowerPoint.
• 03:05 An even quicker way of doing this is to use the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl N.
• 03:11 And you'll see as soon as I do that it pops open another new blank presentation.
• 03:16 And again, I get that design ideas pane,
• 03:19 I can select something from that menu if I want to.
• 03:22 So currently, I have two blank presentations open that I haven't saved.
• 03:27 And because when PowerPoint opens presentations,
• 03:30 they open directly on top of each other.
• 03:32 If you want to quickly switch back to your previous presentation,
• 03:36 a good way of doing this is to jump up to the View tab,
• 03:39 and you'll see that you have a switch windows option.
• 03:43 That's going to list out all of the PowerPoint presentations that
• 03:46 you currently have open, and allow you to toggle or switch between them.
• 03:51 So super nice and simple.
• 03:54 So now I have these new presentations, I'm probably going to want to save them so
• 03:58 I don't lose anything.
• 03:59 So there are a few different ways that I can save.
• 04:02 However, if this is a new presentation you've created,
• 04:05 the first thing you are going to want to do is select Save As.
• 04:10 So let's jump up to File, I'm going to go down to Save As in the left-hand menu, and
• 04:14 then I need to choose a location where I want to save this file.
• 04:18 Now I could choose to browse my local drives and find a folder.
• 04:22 However, if it is a folder that I've accessed recently,
• 04:26 I'm more than likely going to find it in my recent files list.
• 04:30 And I can see here that earlier today,
• 04:32 I save something into the Course Files folder.
• 04:35 And this is the folder that I want to save this file into.
• 04:39 So I can simply click, and it jumps me to the correct folder.
• 04:43 Let's click in the title bar and add the name of this presentation.
• 04:50 I'm saving it as a regular PowerPoint file.
• 04:52 So the file extension is .pptx, and all I need to do is click on the Save button.
• 04:58 Now as soon as I do that, if you take a look at my quick access toolbar,
• 05:02 you can see I have an option that says AutoSave which is toggled to on.
• 05:07 And if you'red using PowerPoint for Microsoft 365,
• 05:10 you will find this option on your Quick Access Toolbar.
• 05:14 And I would recommend that you have this toggle to on because what it means is that
• 05:18 it's going to save automatically for you at regular intervals.
• 05:22 So this really negates the need for you having to keep clicking on the Save icon
• 05:27 in order to save any changes as you go along.
• 05:30 And this AutoSave option is set to save every time you do anything to your
• 05:34 PowerPoint presentation.
• 05:36 And the good thing about that is that if PowerPoint was to crash unexpectedly,
• 05:41 it means that when you reopen this file,
• 05:43 pretty much everything you've done to date is going to be saved.
• 05:47 Now, I will say that if you're not using PowerPoint for Microsoft 365,
• 05:52 you might not see this AutoSave toggle.
• 05:54 And in that instance,
• 05:55 I would recommend that you save your presentations on a regular basis.
• 06:00 And you can either do that by clicking on the Save button which you have by default
• 06:04 on your Quick Access Toolbar, or pressing the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl S.
• 06:09 So all that's left for me to do here, is close down this file, so file Close.
• 06:15 I'm also going to close down this presentation which I didn't actually save.
• 06:19 And I'm going to say don't save.
• 06:22 And now if I want to go back in and reopen that first presentation,
• 06:26 if I go down to open, you should see that sitting right at the top of my list.
• 06:31 Because it was the last presentation that I accessed.
• 06:34 So I think that is more than enough information for
• 06:37 you to wrap your head around.
• 06:38 It's time for you to grab a drink, and join me over in the next lesson.

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Presentations and slideshows are PowerPoint's primary benefit, but if you've never worked with slideshows before, understanding the way presentations work is much different than Word or Excel documents. Presentations work much differently than other Office software. These files use images, labels, sounds and effects to create a slideshow used in meetings and conferences.

Creating a New Presentation

After you open PowerPoint, the opening window is shown where you can choose to create a new presentation or open an existing file already stored on your computer. New files can be created from a template, or you can create a new presentation with no pre-installed images or themes. For this course's examples, we'll use a blank presentation document, which is shown on the opening PowerPoint 2019 main window.

(Blank presentation file with no template theme)

Click the "Blank Presentation" icon and a new file opens in PowerPoint. When a new presentation is created, the first slide is created with two text boxes that can be used in your new file. You can also choose to delete these two text boxes and start with a completely blank slideshow.

(New slideshow presentation)

The left panel shows your slides. This panel lets you see a thumbnail of slides, so you can identify them and get a quick preview of the content contained in the slide. The center window is the current slide you're working on. When you click a slide in the left panel, it becomes the active slide. Since there is only one slide in a new file, it's the only slide active in the above window.

When the file opens, you have a presentation file created but it's not saved yet. Should you close the window now without saving, you lose any file changes. 

Save a New File

As you create a presentation and make changes to your file, you must save it for new content to take effect permanently. The top section of a PowerPoint window has a few buttons to quickly save, undo and redo changes.

(Save, undo and redo change buttons)

In the image above, only the first icon is active because it's a new file with no changes to undo or redo. The "Save" icon is a diskette. All Office applications have this quickbar icons to make it easy to quickly save your files.

Make any changes to your file's content and the "Undo" and "Redo" buttons are enabled. The "Undo" button is the arrow icon that faces left (after the "Save" button), and the "Redo" button is the icon where the arrow circles around to the right (the last icon in the list). The "Undo" button deletes the last action that you made in the file. For instance, if you added text to your file, clicking the "Undo" button will remove this text. The "Redo" button is the opposite of the "Undo" button. Clicking the "Redo" button will re-apply your text.

Clicking the "Save" button will open a dialog window where you choose the file name and directory location where you want to save the file. After you save a file, it's now located on your drive, and you can re-open it should you close the file and want to return to it. It also saves your file should you have a power outage and have a computer failure where the machine reboots.

Create a New Slide

PowerPoint 2019 presentations represent the entire slideshow file. One slide is created when you open a new presentation, but you need to create new slides for each topic. The left panel displays a list of slides currently created, and you can create a new slide by right-clicking this panel and selecting "New Slide" from the context menu.

(Context menu to create a new slide or a new section)

After you select "New Slide," a new one displays in the panel. If you have any themes or templates configured, PowerPoint applies background colors and images when the new slide is created.

Large presentations could be dozens of slides, and as you present them to viewers you might want to separate topics into sections. The "Add Section" option will give you a way to link directly to sections of your presentation. By linking to sections, you can jump around your presentation without scrolling and searching for a specific slide.

(New section created)

Like the popup tooltip says, you can drag and drop the section link into any slide. When you click the link, PowerPoint scrolls to the section. This tool is especially useful when you have dozens of slides and need to reference back to one during a presentation.

Quick Menu to Insert Objects

When you create a new slide, PowerPoint 2019 uses a template that has a title at the top of the slide where you can add text. The second control has a list of pre-made object insertion options.

(Insert an object into a slide)

When you hover your mouse over each object, PowerPoint tells you what will be inserted if you click it. In the image above, the mouse is hovering over the second icon in the top row. The tooltip indicates that should you click this button, you will be able to insert a chart. With PowerPoint 2019 slides, you can insert Excel spreadsheets, charts, videos, sounds, graphs, images from your local computer or ones that you've found online.

For this example, click the "Online Image" object. A window opens where you can search for an image online. The search feature uses Microsoft Bing to search for image. Type an image name in the search text box or choose a category. Drill down to the image that you want to use, and then double-click it to add the image to the slide. The image is then inserted into the square that's shown as a dotted line outline.

(Image inserted into a slide)

The image is automatically sized to fit the slide, but you can use the circles surrounding the image to resize it. The arrow at the top of the image can be used to rotate it. If you use the circles in the corners, the image will resize equally both horizontally and vertically. This should be your preferred way to resize the image, because if you resize using the side circles, your image will be skewed, and its quality will be poorly displayed.

Also notice that you can see the image in the left panel. The left preview images can be used to find slides as you scroll through dozens of them. With only two slides, it's easy to identify the right slide with the apple, but when you have dozens of them, it can be time-consuming to search for the right slide using your mouse. Using the panel, you can scroll through dozens of slides much more quickly.

Each new slide that you create is visible in the left panel. Click it and you can see the content in the middle section of the PowerPoint interface. Remember that you can add objects stored on your computer or ones that you find online such as images. By inserting objects, you can create highly effective marketing or sales presentations that can be shown to hundreds of views at a time.

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Insert a new slide in powerpoint- instructions, how to insert a new slide in powerpoint: video.

            This video lesson, titled “ Inserting New Slides ,” shows how to insert a new slide in PowerPoint. This video lesson on how to add a new slide in PowerPoint is from our complete PowerPoint tutorial , titled “ Mastering PowerPoint Made Easy v.2019 and 365 .”

Overview of How to Insert a New Slide in PowerPoint:

            This tutorial shows you how to insert a new slide in PowerPoint. When you create a new blank presentation in PowerPoint, one default slide that contains a “Title Slide” layout appears. You can click into the placeholders shown in the title slide and type the text you want to have appear as the title and subtitle of your presentation.

            To add another slide to your presentation, you must then insert a new slide and determine which placeholders appear in the slide. The slide layout you select for the inserted slide determines which placeholders appear within it. You can, however, also change the layout applied to a slide after you insert it to change its placeholders.

            To insert a new slide in PowerPoint with a “Title and Content” slide layout, click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Then click the “New Slide” button in the “Slides” button group. Alternatively, to insert a new slide with a different slide layout, click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon. Then click the drop-down part of the “New Slide” button in the “Slides” button group. The drop-down menu that then appears shows the other available slide layouts. Click the name of the desired slide layout in the drop-down menu to insert a new slide with the selected layout.

A picture that shows how to insert a new slide in PowerPoint by selecting a slide layout to insert into the presentation.

Instructions on how to add a new slide in powerpoint:.

• To add a new slide with a “Title and Content” slide layout in PowerPoint , click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon.
• Then click the “New Slide” button in the “Slides” button group.
• Alternatively, to add a new slide with a different slide layout , click the “Home” tab in the Ribbon.
• Then click the drop-down part of the “New Slide” button in the “Slides” button group to show a drop-down menu that shows the other available slide layouts.
• Then click the name of the desired slide layout in the drop-down menu to insert a new slide with the selected layout.

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How to Add a New Slide in PowerPoint

Last Updated: February 10, 2022

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Jack Lloyd . Jack Lloyd is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. He has over two years of experience writing and editing technology-related articles. He is technology enthusiast and an English teacher. This article has been viewed 51,521 times. Learn more...

This wikiHow will teach you how to add a new slide to your PowerPoint presentation. Adding a new slide in PowerPoint is super simple, but the exact process depends on whether you're using a Mac or PC. Either way, we've got you covered! The steps below will walk you through exactly what you need to do.

• If you decide to reposition your slide, you can click and drag it up or down in the sidebar to do so.

• You can click and drag your slide in the sidebar to reposition it in the presentation's order.

Expert Q&A

• If you want to copy a slide from an existing presentation into your current presentation, simply right-click (or two-finger click) the slide's icon in the sidebar and click Copy . You can then right-click a space in your current presentation's sidebar and click Paste . Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• You can also insert a new slide at any time by clicking the sidebar and then pressing either ⌘ Command + M (Mac) or Ctrl + M (Windows). Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

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Mac - Click the Insert tab, then click New Slide . Windows - Right-click the slide sidebar, then click New Slide . Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to create or add a slide in Microsoft PowerPoint

In Microsoft PowerPoint , a presentation is made up of multiple slides. There are several ways to create or add a slide in a PowerPoint presentation. After adding slides, you can move the slides around to adjust the order or sequence, and delete slides.

For instructions on how to add, move, and delete slides in PowerPoint, click a link below and follow the steps.

• Insert new slide.
• Copy and paste existing slide.
• Insert slide from another presentation.
• Move a slide.
• Delete a slide.

Insert new slide

To insert a new, blank slide in a presentation, select your version of PowerPoint and follow the steps.

PowerPoint Online (web version)

Powerpoint desktop application.

In the slide preview pane on the left, click the slide immediately above where you want to insert a new slide. Then, right-click the highlighted slide and select New Slide in the pop-up menu. The new, blank slide is inserted into the presentation below the slide you clicked.

• In the slide preview pane on the left, click with your mouse in-between two slides where you want to insert a slide.

• In the PowerPoint Ribbon , on the Home or Insert tab, click the New Slide option.
• In the drop-down menu that opens, select the type of slide to insert from the slide layout . The new slide is inserted into the presentation where you clicked in step 1 above.

Copy and paste existing slide

To add a copy of an existing slide to a presentation, follow the steps below.

• In the slide preview pane on the left, find the existing slide you want to copy.
• Using your mouse, right-click that slide and select Copy in the pop-up menu .
• Determine where you want to add the copied slide. Right-click the slide above where you want to paste it.

Insert slide from another presentation

To add a slide from another presentation, follow the steps below.

Inserting a slide from another PowerPoint presentation is only possible in the Microsoft PowerPoint desktop application. PowerPoint Online does not support this capability.

• In the slide preview pane on the left, left-click with your mouse in-between two slides where you want to insert a slide.
• In the PowerPoint Ribbon, on the Home or Insert tab, click the New Slide option.
• In the drop-down menu that opens, click the Reuse Slides option at the bottom.

• In the Reuse Slides pane that opens on the right, click the Browse button.
• Find and select the PowerPoint presentation file with the slide you want to add to the currently open presentation, and click the Open button.
• A preview of the slides is displayed below the Browse option. Click the slide you want to insert into the currently-open presentation. A new slide is inserted, with text from the selected slide included in the new slide.
• To also apply the formatting of the selected slide to the newly-inserted slide, right-click the selected slide and select Apply Theme to Selected Slides .

Move a slide

To move a slide to another location in a PowerPoint presentation, follow the steps below.

• In the left preview pane, find the slide you want to move.
• Press and hold the left mouse button on the slide, then drag the slide up or down to where you want to move it.
• Release the left mouse button when you have dragged the slide to its new location.

Delete a slide

To delete a slide in a PowerPoint presentation, follow the steps below.

• Open the PowerPoint presentation.
• In the left preview pane, click the slide you want to delete.
• Press the Delete or Del key to delete the slide.

Related information

• How to change the background color of a slide in PowerPoint.
• How to insert a picture in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• How to add or remove slide transitions in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• How to add a video to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
• How to insert a sound file into a PowerPoint presentation.
• How to start and stop a PowerPoint slide show.
• See our PowerPoint page for related links and information.
• Microsoft PowerPoint help and support.
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How To Add A New Slide In Google Slides

Google Slides is an easy way to create group projects and presentations. Many people can work together at a time on a project to make a great presentation. Moreover, you can see everything the other person is currently doing in the presentation to make you coordinate with them better. To make a good presentation in Google Slides, learning the basics will help a lot and understanding how to add a new slide in Google Slides is the most basic step when creating a presentation.

Google Slides lets you add a new, blank slide anytime. You can even change the layout of the slides. Additionally, you can remove, duplicate or move any slide anytime. This article will walk you through the process of adding a new slide in Google Slides on different devices.

Understanding Slide Layouts

Whenever you add a new slide in your pre-built Google Slide template , select the layout you want to fit in your presentation first. It depends on your presentation and the type of content you want to fit into that particular slide. For example, if you want to write just a title in the slide, you can select the Section Header; if you have a heading as well as a subheading, select the Title Slide; if you want to write a title and the body too, choose Title and Body and so on. There are various options, and you should select the one that suits your content best.

How To Add A New Slide In Google Slides On PC/MAC?

  To add a new slide in Google Slides on PC or MAC, follow the steps below:

• Open Google Slides.

• It will give you the same layout as the selected slide by default. If you wish to change it, go to the Layout tab and select the layout of your choice.

• By clicking the + button, a new slide will be created immediately with the currently selected slide’s layout.
• You can also use keyboard shortcuts to add a new slide in the Google Slides, and then you can change its layout from the above steps. The keyboard shortcut to add a new slide is CTRL+M/Cmd+M. 
• A new slide will be created with your desired layout.

READ MORE: How To Move A Slide In Google Slides?

How To Add A New Slide In Google Slides On Android?

To create a new slide on the Google Slides app on your Android device, follow the steps given below: 

• Open the Google Slides app on your Android device.
• Create a new presentation or open an existing one.
• Select the “New Slide” option at the bottom right of your screen.
• You will see a new menu asking you to choose a layout.
• Select the layout of your choice.
• A new slide will be added to your presentation after your selected slide.

How To Add A New Slide In Google Slides On iPhone/iPad?

Below we have elaborated on how to add a new slide in Google Slides on iPhone or iPad:

• Go to the Google Slides app on your iPhone/iPad.
• Select the presentation you want to edit or create a new one.
• At the bottom right corner, you will see the option of adding a new slide.
• Choose the layout of your choice.
• A new slide with the selected layout will be created.

Here is a short video tutorial:

Adding new slides to your presentation with different layouts enhances it and makes it look good to the audience’s eyes. Having a grasp of these basic functions is important, which saves you time when creating a new presentation. We gave in-depth detail on adding a new slide in Google Slides. After reading the whole article, you can add a new slide to your Google Slides presentation in just a few clicks.

Lastly, keep reading our blogs to get more such tips and tricks about Google Slides.

Can I add two slides at once?

How to write on a blank slide, can i move my slide to another place after adding it, can i add a slide in my presentation from another presentation.

Yes, you can add a slide to your presentation from another presentation. Follow the steps below:

• Go to the File tab.
• Click on the Import Slides option.
• Browse the document from which you want to import the slide(s).
• After selecting the document, click the Insert Button at the bottom-right corner.
• Now, it will ask you which slide(s) you want to insert. Select all the slides that you want to insert in your original document.
• Then click on Import Slides.
• That slide(s) will be inserted into your presentation, and you can move it wherever you wish to.

Can I add a slide in the middle of my presentation?

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Insert a blank slide when using a formatted template in PPT

I'm looking for help with powerpoint templates - I'd like to include a slide that does not include template elements such as logo, design etc.

Is there a way to do this?

Perhaps best off just creating a blank template and then pasting in the elements but and efficient methods most welcome!

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Insert a slide, then right-click on the slide background and choose Format Background . In the Format Background task pane, check the option Hide background graphics . Any logos and graphics from the slide master or layout will be hidden.

If you have many slides like that in a presentation, you could choose View>Slide Master, create a new custom layout and hide the background graphics on it. Then make as many slides as you need from the custom layout.

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How can I make new slides in powerpoint blank by default?

enter image description here

I want to disable this stupid text that I have to manually remove from new slides globally for all current and future presentations.

• microsoft-powerpoint
• microsoft-office-2016
• 2 You shouldn't have to delete it: double-click and start typing; the place-holder text disappears. –  DrMoishe Pippik Nov 20, 2022 at 21:01
• You might also wish to Create your own default presentation . –  harrymc Nov 20, 2022 at 21:10
• I tried making a template but that only makes the first slide blank with no place holders, when I make a new slide within the presentation, the place holders appear. I use powerpoint to manage projects, not to make slideshows. So although they aren't visible during slideshows, the fact that they are during the main editor screen causes me an inconveinence in deleting them. –  user1740026 Nov 21, 2022 at 0:03

Do you need the text box?

If not, I suggest you go to View > Slide Master, delete the text box of Office Theme Slide Master and the Title Slide layout.

Then close Master View.

Delete the first slide and insert new blank slide.

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• Use slide masters Video
• Customize the slide master Video
• Customize master layouts Video
• Create a new slide master and layouts Video

Create a new slide master and layouts

By customizing slide masters, you can create precisely the presentation design and layouts you need. If you want a section of your presentation to look different from the rest of the slides, with its own layouts, create an additional slide master for that section.

Add an additional slide master to a presentation

Click VIEW > Slide Master .

On the SLIDE MASTER tab, do one of the following:

In the Edit Theme group, click Themes , and then under Built-in , select a theme that you want the additional slide master to adhere to.

In the Edit Master group, click Insert Slide Master . Note that, if you use this procedure, the slide master appears without theme color and effects.

What is a slide master?

Use multiple slide masters in one presentation

In this presentation, I have customized the slide master and various master layouts and applied those changes to the slides. But after thinking about it, I’d really like this 'Testimonials' section to look different from the rest of the slides, with its own layouts.

My solution? Create an additional slide master for that section.

Let’s switch to Slide Master view and create a new master.

To keep many of the design details of the current master, I’ll right-click the master, and choose Duplicate Slide Master .

The new master gets inserted as number 2.

It has the same name as the original master, Fabrikam Theme, but with a number 1 in front, meaning it is the first copy of the original.

Now, let’s rename it. We’ll call it "Fabrikam Testimonials", and we’ll give it a unique design, starting with the background.

To remove the current background, I click Background Styles and choose a white background.

Instead of a background fill, I’ll click the INSERT tab, Pictures , and insert a picture file.

I’ll move the picture all the way left, right-click it, and choose Send to Back , to put it behind other content.

So, this master has a new look.

To customize the layouts, I’ll first delete those that I won’t need, keeping only the Title slides and the Testimonials layout.

There are various types of testimonials from our customers, so first I am going to copy this layout. I’ll press Ctrl+D twice to duplicate it twice and we’ll make each layout unique. We’ll change this one, so it says "Testimonials: Corporate". The second one will be "Testimonials: Nonprofit", and the third one "Testimonials: Personal".

Let’s vary the text box color, too.

I’ll right-click the box, click Format Shape , and under FILL , choose another Color : dark orange.

For the Nonprofit layout, we’ll follow the same steps and choose a lighter brown.

So, these are the new customized layouts.

Now, we’ll rename them. For each, we click Rename Layout and change the name.

Let’s also change the Section Header layout’s name to "Testimonials Section Header".

We’ll switch to Normal view now, and apply our design and layouts.

The Testimonials Section Header slide still has its original design applied, so I’ll right-click it, point to Layout , and look for my new layouts.

They are grouped under the new master 'Fabrikam Testimonials'.

I apply the Testimonials Section Header.

Next, this Testimonials slide still has the design and layout from the original master, so I’ll open the Layout gallery again and choose the Testimonials: Corporate layout.

For my other Testimonials content, I’ll insert New Slide and choose Testimonials: Nonprofit and Testimonials: Personal from the gallery.

The presentation now has the new Testimonials design as well as the original Fabrikam design.

To preserve my customizations, I have a couple of choices. Let’s open the Themes gallery on the DESIGN tab.

Each of my new designs appears in the Themes gallery. Here’s the Fabrikam theme, and here’s the Testimonials theme.

I can select one of them and choose Save Current Theme at the bottom of the gallery.

This will save both designs under the theme name that I choose, and for later presentations, I’ll find the theme in the gallery.

Another option is to save the customized presentation as a template.

To do this, click FILE , Save As , and choose PowerPoint Template in Save as type: .

This makes it available whenever you click FILE , New , along with other templates.

When you click the CUSTOM category, you find the Fabrikam template, which you can now use as the design for a new presentation.

By customizing slide masters, I have created precisely the presentation design and layouts I need. And now, you can, too.

For more information, read the course summary, and then experiment on your own.

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