Adding and Renaming Sections in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Presentations that have a large number of slides may get unwieldy and also pose a challenge as far as managing them is concerned, unless they are logically divided into Sections. On the other hand, even presentations that do not have a large number of slides can benefit from Sections. However, the mere act of dividing slides into Sections will not achieve much unless you create and name these Sections in a proper manner to represent what the slides within each Section contain. In this tutorial, let us learn how to add Sections, and also how to rename them.

Adding/Creating Sections

Follow these steps to add a new section to your presentation in PowerPoint 2010:

Open your presentation and navigate to the slide within the Slides Pane, this typically is the slide that will be the first within the new Section you are going to create. As shown in Figure 1, below we selected slide 20, but your slide number may differ.

Figure 1: Slide selected within the Slides pane

Note: The Sections option only works within PPTX file saved in PowerPoint 2007 and later versions. If you create Sections in PowerPoint 2010 or later versions, and then open the PPTX file in PowerPoint 2007, you will see no Sections. However, PowerPoint 2007 will not delete your Sections, and the next time you open the same file in a newer version, your Sections should be available.
Now, create a new Section using any of these alternative ways:

i. Click on the selected slide and select the Home tab of the Ribbon (shown highlighted in red within Figure 2). Then click the Section button (shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2). This opens a drop-down menu, within this drop-down menu, select the Add Section option, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Add Section option within the Section drop-down menu

ii. Right-click the selected slide, from the contextual menu, select the Add Section option, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.

Figure 3: Add Section option within the right-click contextual menu

iii. Right-click in the empty space above the slide where you want to insert a section, and from the contextual menu, select the Add Section option as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4 (we right-clicked between slides 19 and 20).

Figure 4: Right-click contextual menu
Any of the three ways mentioned above explained above add a new Section. Unless you provide a proper name, PowerPoint calls it 'Untitled Section' or similar, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5.

Figure 5: New section added

At this point:

i. Note that as of now all slides from 20 onwards are part of this new Section.

ii. The remaining slides, i.e. slides 1 to 19 which were not sectioned so far will also be included in a new Section that may be called 'Default section' (see Figure 6, below).

Figure 6: Another section was also created

Note: You may wonder why two Sections were created when you expressly created only one? That's because PowerPoint insists on placing all slides within any presentation within Sections, you can thus have all slides in a presentation placed within Sections, or no Sections at all. There's no option to place just a few slides within a Section, and leave the remaining slides not within any Section.

iii. At this point of time, you will be left with two Sections that have uninspiring names such as 'Untitled section' and 'Default section'! You must rename these, as per the process explained next.

Renaming Sections

The reason why we divide our presentation slides into Sections is to make them easily manageable. Renaming your Sections can make this objective more achievable. For example, if your presentation contains information about different products, then you can section the slides product-wise and name the sections logically such as “01. Introduction”, “02. Product A Slides”, “02. Product B Slides”, etc.

To rename a Section, follow these steps:

Click the heading of the section that you want to rename and follow any of the two ways explained below:

i. Select the Home tab of the Ribbon (highlighted in red within Figure 7) and click the Section button, shown highlighted in blue within Figure 7. This opens a drop-down menu, within this drop-down menu, select the Rename Section option as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Rename Section option within the Section drop-down menu

ii. Right-click the selected Section heading, from the contextual menu, select the Rename Section option, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 8.

Figure 8: Rename Section option within the right-click contextual menu
Either of the above mentioned ways brings up Rename Section dialog box, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: Rename Section dialog box
Within the Rename Section dialog box, type the suitable name for the selected section and click the Rename button as shown highlighted in red within Figure 10.

Figure 10: New section name typed in
This renames the selected section, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11: Section name changed
Save your presentation often.