Reordering Sections in PowerPoint 2010

Sections in PowerPoint are not just meant for managing your slides easily, but they can also help you quickly reorder large sets of adjacent slides. For example, you can create a Section including all slides you want to reorder, and then move that Section along with all the slides that it contains to the required position. In this tutorial we'll show you how you can reorder Sections within PowerPoint 2010:

1. Open your presentation, within which you have already added Sections. Then, change to Slide Sorter view, as shown in Figure 1 so that you can easily view your Sections.
   
   
   Figure 1: Presentation opened within the Slide Sorter view
   
   
2. Now, right-click on the name of the Section to be moved -- in Figure 2 you can see that we have chosen the Section named 'First Rule' for reordering. Within the contextual menu that appears, you will find two reordering options: Move Section Up and Move Section Down, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.
   
   
   Figure 2: Options to move the selected Section
   
   
   Note: Did you find that either the Move Section Up or Move Section Downoption was greyed out? If you have right-clicked the first Section in the presentation, you will find the Move Section Up option greyed out. If you have right-clicked the last Section in the presentation, you will find the Move Section Down option greyed out.
   
   
   Let us now explore both options for moving a selected Section:
   
   
   1. Move Section Up: This option moves the selected Section along with its content slides one Section above the preceding Section, as shown in Figure 3 (highlighted in red). Compare with Figure 1 (shown earlier on this page) to see the difference.
      
      
      Figure 3: Result of selecting Move Section Up option
      
      
   2. Move Section Down: This option moves the selected Section along with its content slides one Section below the following Section, as shown in Figure 4 (highlighted in red). Compare with Figure 1 (shown earlier on this page) to see the difference.
      
      
      Figure 4: Result of selecting Move Section Down option
      
      
3. Select any option to move Sections as required.

The options explained above will move the Section just one level up or down. In case if you want to move the selected Section to a position after or before a number of Sections, then you have to use the drag and drop method, as explained below:

1. Within the Slide Sorter view, click on the Section to be moved as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5, and start dragging - the cursor will change to dragging mode, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 5, below. Collapsing your Sections before dragging will help -- scroll down to the end of this tutorial to take a look at the box called Collapse and Reorder.
   
   
   Figure 5: Section being dragged from its position
   
   
2. Drag the Section (only the cursor will move while dragging) to the position where you want to move it. In Figure 6 you can see that we have dragged the selected Section (cursor) below the last Section in the presentation (highlighted in red).
   
   
   Figure 6: Section being dragged to its new position
   
   
3. Let go the mouse button when the cursor is in the required position. This will move the selected Section to the new position, as shown in Figure 7.
   
   
   Figure 7: Section moved to the new position
   
   
4. Save your presentation.

Collapse and Reorder

A more intuitive way to reorder Sections, especially if your Sections have many, many slides, is to first Collapse your Sections as explained in our Viewing Sections in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial so that you right away only see the Section names without any slides, as shown in Figure 8, below. Then you can just drag the Section names to reorder as required!


Figure 8: Collapsed Sections are easier to reorder

See Also:

Reordering Sections in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
Reordering Sections in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
Reordering Sections in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac