Info Tab of Backstage View in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Information is power, and within PowerPoint 2010 all the information that you need about your presentation is available in a single convenient location. This is the new Info panel of the Backstage View. This panel gives you information about permissions set for the active presentation, helps you prepare your content for sharing, and also lets you recover older versions of unsaved files. In addition, it also provides access to all the properties for a specific presentation. To access the Info panel, open the File menu, and choose the Info option, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Info option within File menu selected

Tip: When you click the File menu, you essentially summon PowerPoint 2010's Backstage View.

This brings up the Info panel, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Info panel in Backstage View

All the options marked in Figure 2 above are explained below:

A. Permissions

Provides several options for protecting your presentation. You can mark your presentation as "final", apply a password, make your presentation read-only, apply a digital signature, or use Information Rights Management (IRM) to control presentation access. These links below provide detailed information:

Mark as Final
Remove Mark as Final
Encrypt with Password
Remove and Change Passwords

Sign Up for Windows Rights Management
Using Windows Rights Management
Advanced WRM Permissions
Opening WRM Protected Files

Get Started with a Digital Signature
Acquire or Create a Digital Signature
Creating Digital Certificates Outside PowerPoint 2010
Enable Trusted Certificates
Removing Certificates in Internet Explorer
Remove Digital Signatures

Note: If you have some media files (audio or video) contained within your presentation, then you will see an additional option within the Info tab of Backstage view. This option, called Compress Media lets you optimize any media files so that they take less space, more of this is explained in our Video Compression Options in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.

B. Prepare for Sharing

If you are planning to share your presentation with others, you should consider doing a quality check such as, inspect your presentation for confidential information, validate its accessibility, and check for compatibility with previous versions. You can also do a spell check, and examine the presentation for hidden data and personal information stored in comments, notes, or document properties. All these tasks can be performed within this area. These links below provide detailed information:

Inspect Document
Check Accessibility
Check Compatibility

C. Versions

In this section you can recover your unsaved presentations (if you have closed your file without saving it, or if your computer or application crashed). This link below provide detailed information:

Recovering Presentations Manually

D. Properties

Here you can create and modify many of the presentation’s properties.These links below provide detailed information:

Properties of a Presentation
Advanced Presentation Properties

We will explore all these options individually in subsequent tutorials of this series.