How to create a smart table of contents in PowerPoint


How to create a smart table of contents in PowerPoint

You can manually create a table of contents in PowerPoint from which you switch to the different parts of the presentation. But you’ll be busy for a while. It is better to let the program compose the navigation itself with the new Overview Zoom function.

Step 1: Basic presentation

PowerPoint has a nice new feature: slide zoom. We show how strong this option is that generates an overview of the presentation. This is best understood with an example. We are making a presentation about Scandinavia. It is divided into five parts: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. And of each country we want a slide about the nature, the culture and the sights.

First we ensure that the presentation is ready for content. We don’t need to divide that content into sections ourselves, PowerPoint will soon do that itself when it creates the smart navigation.

Have your presentation ready and you don’t have to divide it into sections.

Step 2: Overview slide

When all the slides are ready, let’s PowerPoint put together a slide with an overview of the five countries. In the left column we click where that overview slide should go and we place a new empty slide there. Then we click in the tab Insert on the button Links and then we choose Zoom.

There are three types of Zoom functions. We choose Overview zoom. Then we get an overview of all slides, but we put a check mark next to the five start slides of each section. So in our example we put a check mark on the first slide of Denmark, the first slide of Finland and so on… Then we click on the button Insert.

Check the opening slides of each section.

Step 3: Zoom effect

PowerPoint creates the sections itself and places thumbnails of the opening slides of each section on the overview. They are real miniatures, because if, for example, there is an animation on such a starting slide, you will also see that movement in the overview. And if you change something on a starting slide later, the thumbnail will also be updated.

When you start the presentation and click on the first thumbnail, it will open with a zoom effect. Then, with each mouse click, the next slides of that section follow. When that section is finished, the overview slide reappears. You don’t have to start with the first section. Depending on how the presentation runs, you can always decide in which order to complete the sections from the overview slide.

The overview slide shows the thumbnails of the opening slides.
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