Weekly Computer Tip # 83
2 October 2004


Automatically create a new slide from titles of other slides
(Microsoft PowerPoint)

Last Tuesday I run a one-to-one PowerPoint training session with a very interesting business man in London. He had been using PowerPoint for quite a while and was successful at it, but he was looking for ways to make his slides look more professional without having to rely on his colleague for help. In trying to improve the effectiveness of his presentations we at some point looked at creating an introduction, agenda, and conclusion slide. Obviously, we could have done this manually, however,

Did you know ...

PowerPoint provides a nifty feature of adding a slide to your existing presentation, that automatically shows the titles of some or all the slides in your presentation. This slide can be renamed "Objectives" or "Agenda", or you can copy it to the end of your presentation and rename it "Conclusion" or "Recap".

Here's how:

  1. Open the completed presentation you want to add a summary slide to.
  2. On the View menu, click Slide Sorter.
  3. In slide sorter view, select the slides whose titles you want to use. (To select multiple slides, hold down CTRL and click the slides you want or select Edit, Select All to select all slides.)
  4. On the Slide Sorter toolbar, click the Summary Slide button.

A new slide, with bulleted titles from the selected slides, appears in your presentation. You might want to move or edit the slide, unless of course you like the uninspiring title "Summary Slide" and its rather funny position in front of the first selected slide. ;-)

Next, you can use the summary slide to create an agenda slide, allowing you to jump to each section in your presentation and then automatically return to the agenda slide ? ready to move on to the next item ? when you reach the end of the section. This will be food for thought for yet another tip though ...

By the way, speaking of presentations ... did you know that research shows that the Number One Fear amongst adults is public speaking? Number two is death. That's right ? death is number two. So for a lot of us the fear of standing in front of a crowd comes above the fear of death. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld says that this must mean that at a funeral most people would rather be the one in the casket, than the one giving the eulogy. Just realise that there are various tricks that you can use to help reduce your anxiety. Although you?ll probably never fully rid yourself of all the "butterflies" in your stomach, you can get them to fly in formation. ;-)

For further information on "Surviving PowerPoint - twelve steps to prevent Death by PowerPoint" email me (karen@roem.co.uk) or call 01223 214177.

By the way, if you have any feedback, ideas or suggestions about these weekly tips, I'd like to hear from you. You are my most important critics! (Just remember the Dutch are uninhibited ;-)

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