Reordering Sections in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Sections can be useful not only while managing your presentation slides, but also for quickly reordering large blocks of adjacent slides. All you need to do is place all the required slides within a single Section, and then move the entire Section, and all the slides within that Section will be moved to a new position at once. Follow these steps to learn more about reordering Sections in PowerPoint 2011:

1. Open your presentation within which you have already added Sections. Change to Slide Sorter view, as shown in Figure 1 so that you can easily access the Sections.
   
   
   Figure 1: Presentation opened within the Slide Sorter view
2. Right-click (or Ctrl+click) on the name of the Section to be moved, in Figure 2 you can see that we have chosen the Section named 'Author Your Presentation' for reordering. Within the contextual menu that appears, you will find two options for moving the Section: 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 either Move Section Up or Move Section Down option 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 explore both options for moving the section:
   

   A. Move Section Up

   This option promotes the selected section along with its content slides to one level above the preceding section, as shown in Figure 3 (highlighted in red). Compare with Figure 1 to see the difference.
   
   
   Figure 3: Result of selecting Move Section Up option
   

   B. Move Section Down

   This option demotes the selected section along with its content slides to one level below the following section, as shown in Figure 4 (highlighted in red). Compare with Figure 1 to see the difference.
   
   
   Figure 4: Result of selecting Move Section Down option
3. Select any option to move the Section(s) as required.

The options explained above will move the Section just one level up or down at a time. 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, and start dragging it as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5.
   
   
   Figure 5: Section being dragged from its position
2. Drag it to the position where you want to move it. In Figure 6 you can see that we have dragged the selected Section below the last Section in the presentation (highlighted in red).
   
   
   Figure 6: Section being dragged to its new position
3. Leave the mouse button when the Section is moved to the required position, as shown in Figure 7.
   
   
   Figure 7: Section moved to the new position
4. Save your presentation.

Collapse and Reorder

An easy 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 2011 for Mac tutorial so that you 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 2010 for Windows