Import Outlines in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac

Creating outlines for PowerPoint in various external applications lets you stay away from distractions in PowerPoint-land. Once you have the outlines done, it's very easy to import it in the form of slides into PowerPoint. While this import process works the same way in all versions of PowerPoint, there are small interface changes.

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to import outlines in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac:

1. Launch PowerPoint, as shown in Figure 1, below. Note that the program typically starts with an empty slide.
2. 
   Figure 1: PowerPoint 2008
3. From the main menu choose Insert | Slides From | Outline File, as shown in Figure 2, below.
4. 
   Figure 2: Outline File
2. Doing so will open the Choose a File dialog box, as shown in Figure 3, below. Select the outline file and click on the Insert button. Note that your outline needs to be either a TXT (Text) or RTF (Rich Text Format) file. Curiously, Word documents are not supported for importing outlines in PowerPoint for Mac.
3. 
   Figure 3: Choose a File dialog box
4. This action will import the outlines into PowerPoint as slides, as shown in Figure 4, below. Do note that this process only adds slides to an existing presentation, and does not replace any existing slides (you can still see the empty, first slide from Figure 1).
5. 
   Figure 4: PowerPoint presentation after importing slides from outline
3. As shown in Figure 5, below, all the text from the outline can be seen in the Outline Pane. This same text also shows up in slides as text placeholders (see Text Placeholders vs. Text Boxes).
4. 
   Figure 5: Outline Pane
4. Save the presentation often.