While Lesson 03 is only 14.5 minutes long, I started following along with the video and pausing it here and there so I could do the steps myself. It drastically increases the training time, but it really helps with learning the new stuff that goes beyond the simple basics of Lessons 1 and 2. This lesson is about working with the actual slides, managing their order for example, and so it includes adding and removing slides, changing the slide layout, organizing slides into sections, and simply rearranging slides.

I confess, as I mentioned previously, I was pretty confident that I could do most things I needed to do in PowerPoint. Which is apparently not the same as doing them the RIGHT way, which is way faster than my hacked techniques. Take for example where I’m really not sure how I want a slide to look, so I might start with a slide with dual text box layouts. Then, half-way through the slide, I might realize that it would be better for it to be in a table layout for more understandable visuals. So I would then add a table, resize it and play around with it, and make it fit. Not according to the default slide-with-table layout, just me doing it manually. Or I would insert a NEW slide with the proper layout, and copy everything over to it.

Now I see how easy it is to just take that first slide, go to HOME / SLIDES box, and choose LAYOUT, changing it to the table layout I want. That’s all you have to do? Huh. Anyone else hear crickets?

Man, I feel really stupid. Of COURSE, the software has options to just change a layout of a slide. Why wouldn’t it? I just never thought about where it was on the menu bar. Sigh.

I also like the “reset” to go back to the default layout of that slide format. I equally never noticed that before at all. Well, at least the rest seems pretty straight-forward — duplicating slides, editing pages, creating new slide layouts in slide master (although the placeholder options were new to me), and slide sorting as well as section sorting.

I was particularly happy to see the overview of how to create sections within decks. I have frequently seen online decks with section breaks, but I had no idea how to actually add them myself. Glad to see it is really easy, i.e., simply right-click in the slide sorter sidebar to pull up the INSERT SECTION option.

Another decent lesson, well worth the price of admission. Oh, right, the training is free. But, still…