Creating and Saving a New Presentation

Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

Let's create our first new presentation using a blank template. We'll learn how to save presentations locally and to the cloud, and understand how this determines how the presentation is saved going forward.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

3.06 creating-and-saving-new-presentations - Exercise.docx
51.3 KB 3.06 creating-and-saving-new-presentations - Exercise solution.docx
49.9 KB

Quick reference

Creating and Saving a New Presentation

A fundemental skill in PowerPoint is knowing how to create a new blank presentation and save it to a folder. Blank presentations by default contain one slide with no placeholders, text or other graphical elements. It provides a blank canvas from which to design a slide deck. 

All presentations should be saved to a local folder, a network drive or into cloud storage. This ensures that any changes we make are saved and the liklihood of losing work is reduced. Presentations saved to the cloud automatically save and synchronize as you work. As a general rule, most presentations we create are saved with the default .pptx file extension. 

When to use

We will need to create and save a new blank presentation when we want to design a slide deck from scratch.

Instructions

Create a new blank presentation

New blank presentations can be created in a few ways: from the File menu, using a keyboard shortcut or from the Quick Access Toolbar. 

From the File Menu
  1. Click the File tab. 
  2. Click New. 
  3. Choose Blank Presentation. 
Using a Keyboard Shortcut
  1. Press CTRL+N. 
From the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)
  1. Click the New button on the Quick Access Toolbar. 

Design Ideas

When we create a new presentation, the Design Ideas pane will show on the right-hand side. The Design Ideas feature examines the contents of the selected slide and offers a variety of design choices based on the layout and content.  

To apply a design to a slide, simply select one from the list and click to apply. 

Switch between Presentations

If you are working on more than one presentation at any time, its beneficial to know how to switch between them efficiently. PowerPoint will only display one presentation at a time in the window. 

  1. Click the View tab. 
  2. In the Window group, click Switch Windows.
  3. Choose the presentation to switch to from the list. 

Save a Presentation

Presentations can be saved to a local folder on our PC, a network drive, an external storage device or in the cloud.

Save a Presentation to Cloud Storage

Presentations saved into a cloud storage application like OneDrive are automatically saved and synchronised as we work. This means we only need to save the presentation once at the beginning and any changes made from that point on are automatically saved. 

  1. Click the File tab. 
  2. Click Save As. 
  3. Click Browse and choose a folder. 
  4. Choose a meaningful name for the presentation and type it into the File name field. 
  5. Verify the Save as type is set to PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx). 
  6. Click Save. 

Once saved, check the AutoSave slider is toggled on in the Quick Access Toolbar to ensure any changes made are automatically saved and synchronised to the cloud.

Save a Presentation to a local folder on our PC

Presentations saved to a local folder do not automatically save as we work. This means we need to ensure that we save at regular intervals. 

  1. Click the File tab. 
  2. Click Save As. 
  3. Click Browse and choose a folder. 
  4. Choose a meaningful name for the presentation and type it into the File name field. 
  5. Verify the Save as type is set to PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx). 
  6. Click Save.

Remember to save your work at regular intervals. Click the Save icon on the Quick Access Toolbar, or select Save from the File menu. Alternatively, we can use the keyboard shortcut, CTRL+S. 

Close a Presentation

A common mistake people make when working in PowerPoint is closing down the application when they meant to close down the current presentation. If we click the X in the top right-hand corner of the PowerPoint window, the application and all open presentations will close. 

To close just the current presentation but leave PowerPoint open, click the File tab and Close. 

Hints & tips

  • To make saving into OneDrive easier from within PowerPoint, click the File tab, Save As and then Add a place. Select your OneDrive account (if you have one). 
  • The Design Ideas pane will pop open automatically when we create a new presentation. We can suppress this through PowerPoint Options. Click the File tab, Options and select the General page. Scroll down to the PowerPoint Designer section and remove the tick from the Automatically show me design ideas box.  
Login to download
  • 00:04 Now we're a bit more familiar with the PowerPoint interface.
  • 00:07 It's time for us to delve into the subject of creating and saving presentations.
  • 00:12 Now currently on the screen I have opened my first presentation.
  • 00:16 If you recall, this was just a blank presentation that I saved into a folder.
  • 00:21 And I want to start out just by reiterating a really important point when
  • 00:25 it comes to closing down presentations.
  • 00:28 Something I see people doing all the time is jumping up to the cross in the top
  • 00:32 right-hand corner, and clicking it in order to close down the presentation.
  • 00:38 But what you'll find is that if you do click on this cross,
  • 00:41 it's going to close down all of PowerPoint.
  • 00:43 So that is any presentations that you have open as well as the entire application.
  • 00:49 No, it might be that that is exactly what you want to do.
  • 00:51 And in that case, it's absolutely fine to click on that cross.
  • 00:55 However, if you just want to close down the presentation that you currently have
  • 01:00 on the screen, you need to go about this in a slightly different way.
  • 01:04 So I'm going to close this down, I'm going to jump up to File, and
  • 01:08 you'll see halfway down at the bottom here, I have a closed option.
  • 01:13 When I click that, it's just going to close down that open presentation, but
  • 01:17 it's still going to leave PowerPoint open.
  • 01:19 So I can then go in, open up something else, or create a new presentation.
  • 01:24 Which moves us nicely on to our next subject,
  • 01:27 and that is creating a new presentation from scratch.
  • 01:31 Now there are a few different ways that you can do this.
  • 01:34 If we jump back into that file tab and go down to new,
  • 01:38 this shows us all of the different ways that we can create new slide decks.
  • 01:44 And the two options that you really have are you can create a new blank
  • 01:48 presentation from scratch, or
  • 01:50 you can create a new presentation based off of a template.
  • 01:54 We're going to talk a lot more about what these templates are, how you access them,
  • 01:58 and how they work in the next lesson.
  • 02:01 For now, I simply want to focus on creating a new blank presentation.
  • 02:06 So what I could do here is just click on Blank presentation.
  • 02:11 It's going to open in PowerPoint, and
  • 02:13 it's also going to pop open that design ideas pane.
  • 02:17 As I mentioned previously, design ideas is there to allow
  • 02:20 you to quickly add some pizzazz to your presentation.
  • 02:24 So for example, if I scroll through these design ideas,
  • 02:27 I might find one that I like and select it.
  • 02:30 And with just one click, I've been able to style up that title page very effectively.
  • 02:36 Now the design ideas that you see in here changed depending on the slide layout that
  • 02:41 you're using.
  • 02:42 Now, I know that terminology isn't too familiar to you at the moment, but
  • 02:46 it will be when we get on to the topic of slide layouts.
  • 02:49 But just be aware that what you see in the design ideas pane changes depending on
  • 02:54 the layout of your slide.
  • 02:56 Now I'm going to close down this pane simply by clicking on the cross.
  • 02:59 Now that isn't the only way that I can create a new presentation in PowerPoint.
  • 03:05 An even quicker way of doing this is to use the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl N.
  • 03:11 And you'll see as soon as I do that it pops open another new blank presentation.
  • 03:16 And again, I get that design ideas pane,
  • 03:19 I can select something from that menu if I want to.
  • 03:22 So currently, I have two blank presentations open that I haven't saved.
  • 03:27 And because when PowerPoint opens presentations,
  • 03:30 they open directly on top of each other.
  • 03:32 If you want to quickly switch back to your previous presentation,
  • 03:36 a good way of doing this is to jump up to the View tab,
  • 03:39 and you'll see that you have a switch windows option.
  • 03:43 That's going to list out all of the PowerPoint presentations that
  • 03:46 you currently have open, and allow you to toggle or switch between them.
  • 03:51 So super nice and simple.
  • 03:54 So now I have these new presentations, I'm probably going to want to save them so
  • 03:58 I don't lose anything.
  • 03:59 So there are a few different ways that I can save.
  • 04:02 However, if this is a new presentation you've created,
  • 04:05 the first thing you are going to want to do is select Save As.
  • 04:10 So let's jump up to File, I'm going to go down to Save As in the left-hand menu, and
  • 04:14 then I need to choose a location where I want to save this file.
  • 04:18 Now I could choose to browse my local drives and find a folder.
  • 04:22 However, if it is a folder that I've accessed recently,
  • 04:26 I'm more than likely going to find it in my recent files list.
  • 04:30 And I can see here that earlier today,
  • 04:32 I save something into the Course Files folder.
  • 04:35 And this is the folder that I want to save this file into.
  • 04:39 So I can simply click, and it jumps me to the correct folder.
  • 04:43 Let's click in the title bar and add the name of this presentation.
  • 04:50 I'm saving it as a regular PowerPoint file.
  • 04:52 So the file extension is .pptx, and all I need to do is click on the Save button.
  • 04:58 Now as soon as I do that, if you take a look at my quick access toolbar,
  • 05:02 you can see I have an option that says AutoSave which is toggled to on.
  • 05:07 And if you'red using PowerPoint for Microsoft 365,
  • 05:10 you will find this option on your Quick Access Toolbar.
  • 05:14 And I would recommend that you have this toggle to on because what it means is that
  • 05:18 it's going to save automatically for you at regular intervals.
  • 05:22 So this really negates the need for you having to keep clicking on the Save icon
  • 05:27 in order to save any changes as you go along.
  • 05:30 And this AutoSave option is set to save every time you do anything to your
  • 05:34 PowerPoint presentation.
  • 05:36 And the good thing about that is that if PowerPoint was to crash unexpectedly,
  • 05:41 it means that when you reopen this file,
  • 05:43 pretty much everything you've done to date is going to be saved.
  • 05:47 Now, I will say that if you're not using PowerPoint for Microsoft 365,
  • 05:52 you might not see this AutoSave toggle.
  • 05:54 And in that instance,
  • 05:55 I would recommend that you save your presentations on a regular basis.
  • 06:00 And you can either do that by clicking on the Save button which you have by default
  • 06:04 on your Quick Access Toolbar, or pressing the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl S.
  • 06:09 So all that's left for me to do here, is close down this file, so file Close.
  • 06:15 I'm also going to close down this presentation which I didn't actually save.
  • 06:19 And I'm going to say don't save.
  • 06:22 And now if I want to go back in and reopen that first presentation,
  • 06:26 if I go down to open, you should see that sitting right at the top of my list.
  • 06:31 Because it was the last presentation that I accessed.
  • 06:34 So I think that is more than enough information for
  • 06:37 you to wrap your head around.
  • 06:38 It's time for you to grab a drink, and join me over in the next lesson.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course