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PowerPointBeginner~30 min practiceLesson 2 of 20

Use layouts and sections

Put the story into Outline view, then organise slides with layouts and sections.

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In this lesson

Draft the slide titles in Outline view, apply built-in layouts and organise the deck into sections.

Practice material

Start with the practice file. Open the worked answer after trying the exercise. CSV and text briefs are also available. All resources and import notes →

Example

Q3 Customer Support Review

Dana has 10 minutes in Thursday's leadership meeting. Her old decks were built from loose text boxes, so slide titles were missing and the accessibility checker flagged every slide.

Q3 Support Review.pptx — Outline View

  1. Context

    1. 1Q3 Customer Support Review
    2. 2Response times improved in every region

  2. Results

    1. 3Ticket volume peaked in August
    2. 4Self-service articles reduced repeat tickets
    3. 5Weekend staffing gap remains

  3. Next steps

    1. 6Next steps: weekend rota and two new articles
Title and Content

Response times improved in every region

Teaching diagram, not a Microsoft screenshot.

How it works

A layout gives you title and content placeholders. Put the heading in the title placeholder so it appears in slide navigation and accessibility tools. Home › Reset restores placeholder positions and formatting; it leaves the text itself in place.

Sections make a long deck easier to arrange. They group thumbnails without adding titles or changing the story. Use them to separate the support review into context, results and next steps, then add the Questions slide at the end.

Treat the response-time and self-service slides as layout practice. Their titles suggest results, but the brief has no response-time or repeat-contact data. Add a hypothesis label to those slides, or replace their titles with statements supported by your own data before sharing them as a business report.

Steps

  1. Choose View › Outline View. Type one slide title per line. Press Enter for a new slide and Tab to turn a line into a bullet on the slide above.

  2. Write titles as takeaways: “Q3 Customer Support Review”, “Response times improved in every region”, “Ticket volume peaked in August”, “Self-service articles reduced repeat tickets”, “Weekend staffing gap remains”, “Next steps: weekend rota and two new articles”.

  3. Return to View › Normal. For each slide, choose Home › Layout and pick Title Slide, Title and Content, or Title Only.

  4. Move titles and body text into the layout placeholders, then remove any extra text boxes. Choose Home › Reset to restore placeholder positions and formatting.

  5. Right-click the first thumbnail › Add Section and name it Context. Add sections called Results (before slide 3) and Next steps (before slide 6).

  6. Choose Review › Check Accessibility and confirm there are no “Missing slide title” warnings.

Try it yourself

  1. Add a seventh slide titled “Questions” using the Section Header layout.
  2. Put it in a new section called Close.
Show expected result
  • Outline view shows seven slide titles in order.
  • The thumbnail pane shows four sections: Context, Results, Next steps, Close.
  • Check Accessibility reports no missing slide titles.

If something goes wrong

Reset does not move a loose text box into the title position.
Reset changes placeholders, so a separate text box will stay where it is. Copy its heading into the layout’s title placeholder, check the wording, then delete the spare box.
Outline view shows body text as another slide.
Select the misplaced line in Outline view and press Tab to make it body text, where supported. You can also move its text into a content placeholder in Normal view. Leave the seven titles at slide level.

Quick check

Try these questions after the exercise. Check the result in your app before marking the lesson complete.

1. Which object should contain the slide takeaway?
2. Where does Results begin in the original exercise?
3. Does a new section repair a missing slide title?

Choose an answer for all 3 questions to check your understanding.

Optional: try it with Copilot

If you have Copilot, try this after the exercise. Keep the original file and compare its suggestions with your own result.

Draft a six-slide outline for a 10-minute Q3 customer support review for leadership. Write each slide title as a one-sentence takeaway and list up to three supporting points per slide.

More from Microsoft

These Microsoft guides cover the tools used in this lesson.

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