The Outline Toolbar

At the left side is the Outline toolbar. It contains buttons that allow the movement, promotion, demotion, and listing of sections in the outline. A new feature in PowerPoint 97 is the Color box, which shows the current page in the outline. Notice how the top level in the outline is the title of a particular slide.

When you wish to highlight a line, you can click on its bullet. Not only will it select that line, it will also select any subtext to that point. This is what happens when you click on the bullet next to the line "States with highest sales" in slide 2:

 

Outline Toolbar Buttons

There are 10 buttons on the Outline toolbar to perform actions on your outline. The following are listed from the bottom to the top.

SHOW FORMATTING-This can turn on and off the fonts and attributes in the outline. Useful to leave it off if outline is long.
SUMMARY SLIDE-This can create an extra slide with a bulleted list from the titles of the other slides.
EXPAND ALL-Shows all levels of the outline
COLLAPSE ALL-Shows only the title level in the outline. Dotted underline below a title indicates subtext
EXPAND-Shows all levels in a single slide
COLLAPSE-Shows only the title level in a single slide. Dotted underline below a title indicates subtext
MOVE DOWN-Takes selected text or line where insertion point is located and moves it down one line.
MOVE UP-Takes selected text or line where insertion point is located and moves it up one line.
DEMOTE-Takes selected text or line where insertion point is at and moves it one level to the right
PROMOTE-Takes selected text or line where insertion point is at and moves it one level to the left

Formatting the Outline-Examples

Here is the outline when the Show Formatting button is off

Here is the outline after clicking on the Collapse All button

In this example, the last two lines of slide 3 are selected and demoted, since those lines are really subtext to the "Northern states" line.

As a follow-up to the previous example, the last three lines will be selected and promoted. Since the line "Northern states showed modest gains" is at level 1 on the outline, it gets promoted to the title of a separate slide.

In this example, we will select slide 3 and move it above slide 2. Since the Move Up button goes 1 line at a time, 7 clicks of the button are needed.

 

uparrow.gif (1292 bytes) Outline View PowerPoint Introduction Cut, Copy, and Paste

last modified 6/11/99 PJM