For Seniors: How to Understand PowerPoint Views
Like other Office applications, PowerPoint provides several different views for you to work with. Each view is useful for a different set of activities. Normal view — the default — is the most commonly used view. You can choose between the other views in either of these ways:
Click one of the View buttons in the bottom-right corner of the PowerPoint window. (Not all the views are represented there.)
On the View tab, click a button for the view you want.
The following table summarizes the available views and tells what each view is good for.
| View | How to Select | Useful For |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | Click the button in the bottom-right corner; or choose View→Normal | Editing the content of a slide |
| Slide Sorter | Click the button in the bottom-right corner; or choose View→Slide Sorter | Viewing all slides in the presentation at a glance, rearranging slide order |
| Reading View | Click the button in the bottom-right corner; or choose View→Reading View | Showing a presentation in a window |
| Slide Show | Click the button in the bottom-right corner; or choose View→Slide Show | Showing the presentation full-screen |
| Notes Page | Choose View→Notes Page | Editing the speaker notes for each slide |
| Slide Master | Choose View→Slide Master | Making global changes that affect all slides in the presentation |
| Handout Master | Choose View→Handout Master | Making changes that affect the design of the handouts you print |
| Notes Master | Choose View→Notes Master | Making changes that affect the design of the speaker note pages you print |
