PowerPoint - Naming Slides

Naming PowerPoint Slides

Viewing the Slide names

To do this press F5 and then click the controls at the lower left hand corner of the screen to view the slide names. 

It's fantastic news for this presentation as we can see that all the slides are named so we will not have any problem identifying which slide is which and can easily jump around in our presentation.

Outline View

For PowerPoint 2010, click on the Outline tab on the left hand side of the normal view to switch the normal display of thumbnails to an outline of your presentation. Each icon on the left represents a slide. In PowerPoint 2013 and later the Outline pane has to be turned on by clicking the Outline View control in the Presentation Views group on the View tab.

Outline view

Looking at the list of slides in the outline pane you will be able to see which slides have not been named. They were probably blank slides inserted into the presentation.

Click to the right of the icon and type in some text to name the slide. You can rename existing slides if you wish but remember that you are changing the text that is displayed on the slide.

You must have some title text on your slide but if you don't want to see it you can always hide it or move it off the presentation frame so that it does not display.

Having named your slides you can return to the normal view by clicking the Slides tab if you prefer to work in this more familiar Powerpoint view.

Moving or Hiding the Title Text

As soon as you name your slide you will see a title text box appears on the slide which may disrupt the beauty of your slide and you might want to get rid of it. Don't delete the text box or you will return to having an un-named slide. Either format it to match the background, move it off the slide onto the grey background so that it does not display or hide it. I prefer to hide my ones.

Hiding the title text using the Selection and Visibility pane

To hide your title text, press Alt+F10 to turn on the Selection and Visibility Pane. There’s a control to turn this on and off on the Home tab but it’s easily missed. This pane lists all the objects on your slide and you can easily identify your title text as the object, "Title 1". Click the eye to the right to hide it.

If you have many other slide objects and maybe some complicated animations going on, it's probably a good idea to rename "Title 1" as "Name tag" or something to make it more obvious. To rename an object, click the current name in the pane and replace the text.