THE VIEW TAB
 
The View Tab

The final tab in the Ribbon is the View tab. This contains tools which can help you view your presentation in the best way, depending on what you want to do.


Presentation Views

First, we have various ways to view presentations:

Normal: This is the view that PowerPoint naturally begins with. It allows you to see the current slide in detail, outlines, slide thumbnails, and notes.

Slide Sorter: This view allows you to see large thumbnails of all your slides, so you can arrange them and modify them to your liking.

Notes Page: This view focuses on the Notes area. If you give your presentation in "Presenter" mode, with a TV showing the full slide view, and your notebook/laptop screen showing an overview of your slide show, the Notes area can serve the same purpose as notes written on index cards, or a script.

Slide Show: This starts the slide show.

Masters

A "Master" is a way to set the same appearance for all slides. Previously, we saw some choices in dialog boxes to "Apply" or "Apply to All"; clicking on "Apply" would change only one slide; clicking "Apply to All" would change all existing slides, and would also be applied to new slides you create after that. A "Master" slide is like the "Apply to All" button; if you make a change to it, the change will appear on all slides.

There are three types of Master on the View tab: Slide Master, Note Master, and Handout Master. Each Master has its own Ribbon tab.

On the Slide Master, anything you add or change will appear on all existing slides.

NOTE: When you get the Slide Master Ribbon, you must click the Close Master View button in order to get back to the regular slide editing views. Clicking on the other ribbon tabs will not leave Slide Master. All of those ribbon tabs (Home, Insert, Animations, etc.) will only change the Slide Master objects, until you close the Master view!

You can add any element you wish to the Slide Master. Any object can be added, and you can change the background as well.

When you open the Slide Master, it will show you a slide with many pre-set text and media placeholders. These are intended to make it easier for you to add a commonly-used slide element or style. Personally, I prefer to create my own layout; I usually just select all the boxes and delete them, then add the slide elements I want.

Notice that there are many different slide masters in thumbnail view on the left; you are allowed to re-design any one of the pre-set slide layouts. You can also add your own slide layout, which can then be accessed from the "Layout" button in the "Slides" section of the "Home" tab on the Ribbon.

Don't forget to close the Master view when you're done!
Other View Buttons

This is a quick overview of many other tools on the View tab. Most are not used very often.

If you make a comment, it will look like this:

Show/Hide

Makes visible a ruler at the sides, or gridlines which help you align objects on a slide.

Zoom

Makes the view of the slide larger or smaller. The same can be done with the zoom slider at the right side of the status bar at the bottom of the PowerPoint window.

Color/Grayscale

Changes your screen to a variety of black-and-white styles, mostly for people with vision difficulties.

Window

If you have more than one presentation open at the same time, these commands will arrange them for you.

Macros

This is an advanced feature. A "Macro" is a kind of mini-program. You can tell your computer to remember a series of actions (menu commands, mouse clicks, etc.) and perform them automatically.