Slides

Slides makes presentations. Open it at slides.cactive.com.au or from the app switcher. Decks are files in Drive, and sharing, comments, version history, templates and downloads work as they do in all three office apps: see Documents, Sheets and Slides. This page is about what's particular to Slides.

The editor

• The slides are down the left. Click one to work on it; Shift-click picks a run of slides and ⌘-click (Ctrl-click) adds one, so you can move, duplicate, skip or delete several at once. Drag slides to reorder them. Right-click a slide for its menu.
• The slide is in the middle. View → Zoom (or the zoom at the right of the toolbar) fits it to the window or shows it at 50% to 200%.
• Speaker notes are under the slide (View → Speaker Notes hides them).
• View → Grid View (⌘⌥1) shows every slide as a grid to reorder and pick from; double-click one to edit it.
• Format → Format Options opens the panel on the right with four tabs: Format for what's selected, Slide for the slide's layout, background, transition and whether it's skipped, Theme for the deck's look, and Animate for builds.

On a phone the slides run across the bottom under the slide.

Slides and layouts

Slide → New Slide (⌘M) adds a slide after the current one with a fitting layout; the arrow beside the toolbar's + picks the layout: Title, Title and Body, Section, Two Columns, Title Only, Blank, Caption or Big Number. A layout places placeholders: boxes that say "Click to add title" until you type in them (the hint never prints or shows when presenting).

Slide → Change Layout (or the Slide tab) gives selected slides another layout: titles stay titles and body text stays body text, moved to the new layout's places. Slide → Reset Slide puts placeholders back where the layout has them.

View → Edit Layouts changes the layouts themselves. Drag and resize a layout's placeholders; slides on that layout follow, except placeholders you've moved by hand on a slide. Done goes back to the slides.

Slide → Skip Slide leaves a slide out when presenting (it stays in the deck, dimmed, with a crossed-out eye). File → Slide Size switches between widescreen (16:9) and standard (4:3); everything scales to fit.

Text

Double-click a box (or select it and press Enter) to type in it; Esc stops. A single click on an empty placeholder opens it, and typing with a box or shape selected goes straight into it. With a box selected but not open, Bold, a colour, a size or bullets apply to all its text.

• Fonts and sizes are in the toolbar. Sizes are in points.
• Bold (⌘B), italic (⌘I), underline (⌘U), strikethrough (⌘⇧X), superscript (⌘.) and subscript (⌘,), text colour and highlight.
• Alignment (⌘⇧L, ⌘⇧E, ⌘⇧R, ⌘⇧J), top, middle or bottom in the box (Format → Vertical Align), and line spacing.
• Bulleted (⌘⇧8) and numbered (⌘⇧7) lists; Tab and Shift-Tab change an item's level.
• Format → Clear Formatting (⌘\) takes formatting off.
• Text that doesn't fit shrinks to fit the box. Turn that off for a box with Format → Shrink Text on Overflow.

Colours offer the theme's colours first. Text and shapes in theme colours change with the theme; colours you pick from the palette or type in stay as they are.

Shapes, lines, pictures, tables and charts

Everything is in the Insert menu and the toolbar.

• Text Box: drag on the slide to draw one, or click to place one.
• Shape (the toolbar, or Insert → Shape): 41 shapes (rectangles, ovals, triangles, arrows, stars, callouts and more). Drag to draw (Shift keeps proportions) or click to place. Shapes take text: double-click one to type in it.
• Line and Arrow: drag from one end to the other (Shift keeps the angle to 45° steps). Lines have a colour, weight, dashes and an end cap at either end (arrow, triangle, circle, diamond).
• Image: upload pictures from your computer, pick them from Drive, paste them, or drop them on the slide. A picture into an empty picture placeholder fills it. The Format tab crops a picture, changes its brightness, contrast and saturation, makes it black and white, rounds its corners, sets its alt text and replaces it. Pictures from Drive have Edit in Studio.
• Table: pick the size from the grid. Double-click a cell to type in it. The Format tab adds and removes rows and columns (beside the cell you're in) and turns the header row on or off.
• Chart → From Sheets picks a spreadsheet and one of its charts; the chart comes in with its data. Update From Sheets in the Format tab brings later changes over, and Open Source opens the spreadsheet. Chart → Column, Bar, Line, Pie or Donut makes a chart kept in the deck, with sample data you edit as a small table in the Format tab. Charts use the theme's colours.
• Video Link shows a card that opens a YouTube, Vimeo or other video link in a new tab.

Moving and arranging

Click to select; Shift-click or ⌘-click to add to the selection, or drag across empty space to select everything inside. Drag to move (Shift keeps it level or upright), the handles to resize (Shift keeps proportions, Alt resizes from the middle; pictures keep their proportions unless you hold Shift), and the round handle on top to turn it (Shift: 15° steps). Arrow keys nudge (Shift: 10 pixels).

While you drag, guides show when edges and centres line up with the slide or other things, and when gaps are equal; it snaps to them. Hold Alt to drag freely, or turn snapping off with View → Snap to Guides.

Arrange has the order (Bring to Front ⌘⇧], Bring Forward ⌘], Send Backward ⌘[, Send to Back ⌘⇧[), Align (to each other, or to the slide when one thing is selected), Distribute (three or more, evenly), Rotate and Flip, Group (⌘⌥G) and Ungroup (⌘⌥⇧G), and Lock (locked things can't be moved or changed until unlocked). Edit → Duplicate (⌘D) copies the selection; cut, copy and paste work between slides and decks.

Themes and backgrounds

The Theme tab switches the deck between the four themes (Plain, Bold, Editorial and Pitch) and edits this deck's copy of its theme: its eleven colours, its heading and body fonts, and its background. Editing a theme changes only this deck.

The Slide tab gives a slide its own background colour or picture (Apply to All Slides gives every slide the same), or puts it back to the theme's.

Presenting

Present (⌘↵) starts at the current slide full screen; From Beginning (⌘⇧↵) at the first. Then:

On a phone or tablet, tap or swipe left to move on and swipe right to go back. Move the pointer to the bottom left for the controls (including full screen). Slides change with their transition (fade, slide from the right or push, set in the Slide tab with its duration; Apply to All Slides sets every slide's), and things with an animation (the Animate tab: appear, fade in or fly in) appear one click at a time, in the order you set them.

Presenter View (the arrow beside Present, or View → Presenter View) opens a second window for you: the current and next slide, your speaker notes (with larger and smaller text), a timer you can pause and restart, the time, and buttons to move on, go back, black the screen or end. It follows the presentation, and the presentation follows it. Present on the projector or shared screen and keep the presenter view on yours. A link ending in /present opens a deck ready to present. Someone with an "anyone with the link" link sees the slides and a Present button that plays them full screen.

Printing and downloading

• File → Print (⌘P) prints one slide a page at the slide's size; File → Print Notes and Handouts prints notes pages (each slide above its notes) or handouts with three slides a page (with lines for notes) or six. Skipped slides aren't printed.
• File → Download → PNG Image saves the current slide as a picture (1920 × 1080 for widescreen).
• PowerPoint and PDF downloads, and opening PowerPoint files, are coming (see Documents, Sheets and Slides).

Drafting slides

• Tools → Draft Slides From an Outline: each line becomes a slide's title, lines starting with a dash (or indented) become its bullets, and lines starting with > its speaker notes. The first slide becomes a title slide and a title on its own a section slide.
• Tools → Draft Slides From a Document: picks a document from Drive and makes a slide for each of its main headings, with the paragraphs and list items under it as bullets.
• Tools → Draft Slides With Caity opens Caity beside the slide: Draft slides from an outline or pasted text adds slides after the current one, and Write speaker notes writes the current slide's notes. Both can be undone.

Comments and working together

Comments on a slide go on what's selected (or the slide): select a shape, picture or box and choose Insert → Comment (⌘⌥M). Things with comments have a marker on their corner, and slides with comments have a speech bubble in the slide list. Clicking a comment in the panel goes to its slide and selects what it's on.

Everyone in the deck sees the others' selections outlined in their colours, with their names, and a dot on the slide each person is on. Changes arrive as people make them; typing merges letter by letter. Edit → Undo (⌘Z) undoes your own changes, not other people's.

Version history marks the slides that differ from the current deck when you look at an earlier version.