Presentation Gallery in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

When launched, PowerPoint 2016 typically opens the Presentation Gallery that you can see in Figure 1, below. This 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: PowerPoint 2016 Presentation Gallery

Each element of the PowerPoint Presentation Gallery is explained below, as marked in Figure 1 above:

A. Recent

Here you will see the list of recent presentations. To open, click on the name of any recent presentation.

B. Open Other Presentations

This option, when selected brings up the Open pane within the Backstage view, as shown in Figure 2. Here first you need to choose the Places from where you want to open the presentation(s) such as Recent Presentations, OneDrive, or Computer. You can even Add a place where your presentations are saved such as a cloud location. Then click to see an available list of presentations (appears on the right side as a new pane).

Figure 2: Open Pane within Backstage view

C. Search online templates and themes

Here just enter any keyword(s) as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, and click the Search button (the magnifying lens icon) to search for online templates and themes. You can see the results in the New pane within Backstage view, as shown in Figure 3. Click on any of the thumbnails to open a presentation based on the template.

Figure 3: Results for searched keyword

D. Suggested searches

Here you'll find some suggested searches based on keywords and categories. These include: Business, Calendars, Charts and Diagrams, Education, Medical, Nature, and Photo Album. Just click on any of these keywords to get relevant results.

E. Themes and Templates

This section provides quick access to locally available Templates and Themes. Click on any Theme other than Blank Presentation. This brings up a window with the selected Theme, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Variants of the selected Theme

Within this window you will get to choose from variations of the selected theme (highlighted in red within Figure 4). The More Images arrows (highlighted in blue within Figure 4) show some of the layouts available in the selected theme. And the arrows highlighted in green within Figure 4 let you browse Previous and Next Themes.