Slide and Content Creation
Building and organising slides
Candidates should add, duplicate, reorder, hide and delete slides, and use sections to group content in long decks. The Outline view lets you enter titles and body text quickly; the Slide Sorter supports reordering and bulk operations. A frequent trap is deleting a slide when hiding was intended (hiding keeps it in the file but skips it in the show).
Text and placeholders
Understand placeholders versus text boxes: placeholders inherit master formatting; text boxes are free-floating. Know how to set bullet levels, adjust line spacing, and use Format Painter to copy formatting. Autofit options (shrink text on overflow) can silently reduce font size, so check readability afterwards.
Speaker notes and handouts
Notes pages hold presenter prompts invisible to the audience; handouts print slides for attendees. A trap is putting essential content only in notes, which the audience never sees.
Transitions and animation basics
Transitions apply between slides; animations apply to objects within a slide. Keep effects purposeful and consistent. Understand entrance, emphasis and exit effects, and that animation order can be reordered in the animation pane.
Worked example
To convert a wall of text into readable slides: split into multiple slides by idea, give each a descriptive title, reduce to key phrases, move detail into speaker notes, then apply a consistent layout. This preserves information while improving delivery.
Reuse
Reuse slides from other decks, and check that pasted content adopts destination theme formatting.