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Import Outlines in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Learn how to import outlines in PowerPoint 2010.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
OS: Windows 8, 7, Vista, and XP

Date Created: October 12th 2010
Last Updated: October 12th 2010

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, I'll show you how to import outlines in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows:

Launch PowerPoint (see Figure 1) -- note that the program typically starts with an empty slide.

Figure 1: PowerPoint 2010
From the Home tab of the Ribbon click the New Slide button. Thereafter select Slides from Outline option located at the bottom of the list, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Slides from Outline
This will open the Insert Outline dialog box that you can see in Figure 3. Navigate to select the outline file on your computer and click on the Insert button.

Figure 3: Insert Outline dialog box
This will import the outlines into PowerPoint as slides (see Figure 4). 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).

Figure 4: PowerPoint presentation after importing slides from outline
As shown in Figure 5, 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).

Figure 5: Outline Pane
Save the presentation.