Presentation Gallery in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac

When launched, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac typically opens the New Pane of Backstage view that contains the Presentation Gallery that you can see in Figure 1, below. The Presentation Gallery provides several ways to start your new presentation using a Template, a Theme, a recent presentation, a not-so-recent presentation, or even a blank presentation. These and other choices are explained in this tutorial.

Figure 1: Presentation Gallery

Options within the Presentation Gallery are explained below, as marked in Figure 1 above:

A. Account

Launches a window as shown in Figure 2 below that shows your User Information. It also provides details of services connected to PowerPoint. These services show up as Places to open and save files, as explained in our Add Places in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac tutorial.

At the bottom of this window, you will also find Sign Out option (refer to Figure 2).

Figure 2: Account window

You can learn more in our Account Option in Backstage View in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac tutorial.

B. New

This section provides quick access to the templates as shown in Figure 1, shown earlier on this page. Here are some guidelines:

• Click on the Blank Presentation thumbnail (the top-left thumbnail) and click the Create button (highlighted in blue within Figure 1) to create a blank presentation. Alternatively, you can also double-click the Blank Presentation thumbnail to achieve the same result.
• You can click on any of the templates and click the Create button, or double-click to create a new presentation based on that template.
• To access more templates, use the scrollbar on the right.
• You can also use the Search box (highlighted in red within Figure 1) to locate a particular Template for your new presentation, type keywords in the Search box, and press the Return key. We searched for the keyword, "Certificate," and found several results that are sourced from Microsoft's online resources, as shown in Figure 3, below.
• 
  Figure 3: Search online for more Templates

C. Recent

Here, you will see the list of recent presentations as shown in Figure 4. To open, click on the name of any recent presentation. You can also use the Search box at the top-right corner to locate a particular recent presentation.

Figure 4: Recent option

D. Open

This option, when selected brings up the Open pane as shown in Figure 5. Here, you need to choose a Place in the first column. A Place is a location from where you can open and save files. Places include OneDrive, SharePoint, or even your Mac. After you choose a Place, you can navigate folders to see available presentations.

Figure 5: Open option