Outlining Toolbar in PowerPoint 2003 and 2002 for Windows

PowerPoint provides many toolbars, and these can be handy for one-click operations. But since there are so many toolbars, you might not have all of them visible, or maybe you have also created a customized toolbar. In this tutorial, we'll show you how to use the Outlining toolbar.

The Outlining toolbar helps organize the title and text content of the slides, in other words, it just works with the outline of the presentation. This can be a good thing, since this makes it easier to organize your outline, in the process, you can add or merge slides, and do much more.

Here's a quick tutorial on using the Outlining toolbar:

1. Open any presentation in PowerPoint, or download the Indezine sample presentation.
2. Make sure that the left pane of the PowerPoint interface shows the outlining tab, as you can see in Figure 1, below. Remember, this screenshot uses PowerPoint 2003, and earlier versions were slightly different.
3. 
   Figure 1: Outlining Tab
3. As you can see in Figure 1, above, the entire outline of the presentation comprising the title and text placeholders is shown in the Outline pane. Most of the edits you make to this content in the outlining pane work best with the Outlining toolbar. Let's explore this toolbar.
4. If you are not able to see the Outlining toolbar, it might be hidden. To make it visible choose View | Toolbars | Outlining, as shown in Figure 2, below.
5. To learn more, see Hide/Show Toolbars
6. 
   Figure 2: Toolbars
5. Figure 3, below, shows the Outlining toolbar. Remember that all the options in the Outlining toolbar work only if the Outline pane is visible, as shown in Figure 1, previously on this page.
6. 
   Figure 3: Outlining toolbar options
7. Here's what these buttons do:

1. Promote

8. Changes the selected line to the previous level.
9. For example, if you select the text of the second-level bullet and apply promote the text will be converted to a first-level bullet.
10. Similarly, if you apply this technique on a first-level bullet, it’ll turn into the slide title. But watch out—if your slide already has a title, PowerPoint will create a brand-new slide instead. Double the slides, double the confusion!

2. Demote

11. Changes the selected line or slide title to a lower level.
12. For example, if you select the text of the first-level bullet and click the Demote button, the text will be converted to a second-level bullet.
13. Similarly, a slide title gets demoted to a first-level bullet.

3. Move Up

14. Move up the selected slide title to one slide above.
15. Similarly, if a bullet level is selected, this option moves that bullet level above on the same slide.

4. Move Down

16. Move down the selected slide title to one slide below.
17. Similarly, if a bullet level is selected, this option moves that bullet level below in the same slide.

5. Collapse

18. Hides the body text of the selected slide.

6. Expand

19. Displays all the body text of the selected slide.

7. Collapse All

20. Hides body text of all the slides in the presentation.

8. Expand All

21. Displays body text of all the slides in the presentation.

9. Summary Slide

22. First, select the slides that you want, and then click this button so that PowerPoint can create a summarized slide that contains all the slide titles.
23. To create a summary slide of all slides, select all of them in the Outline pane (Ctrl + A), and then click this button.

10. Show Formatting

24. Shows all the text formatting done in the actual presentation in outline view. For example, you can see the actual font you used.