Locked lesson.
About this lesson
We will look at how to add document properties (metadata) to assist with searching for presentations. We will also see how to remove all metadata from a presentation prior to sending the document to external clients/customers.
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
08-01-setting-document-properties Exercise.docx55 KB 08-01-setting-document-properties Exercise Solution.docx
148.3 KB
Quick reference
Adding and Removing Document Properties
Document Properties are information that reside in the background of every PowerPoint presentation created. This information is called metadata. Some document properties are generated automatically by PowerPoint such as the creation date, author details, file size etc. Other properties are user generated and can be changed.
Document Properties can help when searching for presentations.
When to use
Add document properties to every presentation as part of best practice as they provide helpful information to others and also assist us when we are searching for a presentation.
Instructions
Document Properties
- From the File tab, click Info.
- Document Properies are on the right-hand side.
Much of the info in document properties is generated by PowerPoint when the presentation is created. This information cannot be modified. However, some fields can be changed.
- Click in the Title field.
- Type 'LandCo Sales Pitch'.
- Click in the Tags field.
- Type 'Landco, sales pitch, sales'. Separate tags with a comma.
- Click in the Category field.
- Type 'Sales'.
Show All Properties
- Click Show All Properties.
- Click in the Company name field.
- Type 'LandCo'.
Advanced Properties
- Click the Properties drop-down arrow.
- Select Advanced Properties.
- Click the Custom tab.
- Select Checked by and click Add.
- Type 'Claire Smith'.
- Click OK.
- Save the presentation.
Search Using Document Properties
- Open File Explorer.
- In the search field, type 'tag:sales' and press Enter or click the magnifying glass.
- Click the cross to clear the search.
- In the search field, type, type 'author:Deb Ashby'.
- Click the cross to clear the search.
- In the search field, type 'company:LandCo'.
- Click the cross to clear the search.
Hide Slides
When we were looking at document properties, we could see that the presentation currently contains no hidden slides. Hiding slides is a way to omit a slide or slides from the presentation without deleting the slide.
- In the Slides pane, right-click and select Hide Slide from the contextual menu.
- Notice the strike through the slide number.
- From the File tab, click Info.
- Notice the document properties have updated to show 1 hidden slide.
Hints & tips
- To unhide a slide, click on the slide, right-click and select Unhide.
- 00:04 When you're thinking about finalizing your presentation,
- 00:07 you might want to consider adding in some document properties.
- 00:11 Now, document properties allow you to add information into your PowerPoint
- 00:15 presentation, and you'll find them across all of the Microsoft applications.
- 00:21 There are a number of document properties that are created by PowerPoint
- 00:25 that you can't change things such as the date that the document was created,
- 00:30 the date it was last modified, and things like author information.
- 00:34 And then there's a whole set of document properties that you can add in yourself.
- 00:39 So if you want to add in specific keywords, or
- 00:42 maybe add in some kind of note as to who last checked or review this document,
- 00:47 you can do all of that kind of thing through document properties.
- 00:51 And document properties are essentially metadata which sits in the background, and
- 00:56 tag your file in different databases or even something like File Explorer.
- 01:01 Now, if you're still unsure as to what I mean, let's do a quick demonstration.
- 01:05 Now you'll find Document Properties underneath the File tab in the info page.
- 01:11 And over here on the right hand side you can see we have this little heading of
- 01:15 properties and then we have different fields.
- 01:17 Some of these in fact most of these at this stage are already completed.
- 01:21 So wherever you can see information in here,
- 01:24 that's information that's been automatically generated by PowerPoint.
- 01:28 Based on things like when I created the presentation, the size and
- 01:32 obviously the fact that I'm the author.
- 01:35 So this is super useful to come to if you want to find out quickly what the size of
- 01:39 your presentation is.
- 01:40 I can see how many slides I have in this presentation 21, I have 0 hidden slides.
- 01:47 The title here is listed as PowerPoint presentation.
- 01:50 So that's fairly generic.
- 01:52 And you can see this is one of the properties that I can actually change.
- 01:56 So what I'm going to do here is change the title to land co,
- 02:05 Sales pitch, I can add in some tags.
- 02:08 So maybe I want to tag this with land co,
- 02:14 sales pitch, sales so on and so forth.
- 02:20 I could even add a category.
- 02:22 So again, I'm going to put this in the category of sales.
- 02:25 I can see when this was last modified.
- 02:27 So today at 3:30 PM when it was created, and I haven't yet
- 02:31 printed this presentation and so that's why this field is empty.
- 02:36 You can see that I'm the author, and
- 02:38 I was also the last person to modify this particular presentation.
- 02:42 Now right at the bottom here I have a link to show all properties.
- 02:46 So this is going to expand out that list where I can add more information.
- 02:51 So I can add in some comments if I want to the status.
- 02:55 I can choose a subject and also a company name.
- 02:58 So let's add land code in here as well.
- 03:01 And if I want to get really granular and add in lots of background information,
- 03:06 if I click the drop down next to Proctor's at the top,
- 03:09 I can jump into advanced properties where I have a number of different tabs.
- 03:14 So if we click on the General tab, this is going to show me some general information
- 03:18 about my PowerPoint presentation.
- 03:20 So again, I can see the title at the top, the type, the location,
- 03:25 so where this is saved, and the file size.
- 03:28 And then I can see when it was created, when it was modified, and
- 03:31 when it was last accessed.
- 03:32 So very useful information.
- 03:35 On the Summary tab again, I can see the title, the author, the company,
- 03:40 and I have a few additional fields in here that I can complete if I want to.
- 03:46 The statistics page is going to show me things like how many slides I have in my
- 03:50 presentation, the number of paragraphs and words, notes, hidden slides and
- 03:55 how many multimedia clips I have within this presentation.
- 03:59 I can also see that my presentation format is widescreen.
- 04:03 Let's go to contents,
- 04:05 this is going to show me different document contents organized by category.
- 04:10 So at the top here, I can see all of the fonts that I've used in this presentation.
- 04:14 I can see what the theme is, I can see things like slide titles, and
- 04:19 then finally we have a custom tab.
- 04:22 So this is useful if I want to add in information such as checked by somebody
- 04:27 else in the team.
- 04:28 So if I select checked by, I can add a value and
- 04:32 say that this has been checked by Claire and click on Add.
- 04:38 So maybe I require all members of my team to check this presentation before I
- 04:43 finalize it.
- 04:44 So what I could do is ask them to add his little checked by into this custom tab.
- 04:49 So I know that it's been done.
- 04:51 And there's a whole host of different custom fields that you can add into here.
- 04:56 Now another cool thing about this is that you can use this information to search for
- 05:00 your presentation.
- 05:01 So let's click Back and I'm just going to do a quick save.
- 05:05 So now I'm going to jump across to file explorer and just show you how you can
- 05:09 use specific document properties in order to find your files.
- 05:13 I'm in File Explorer, I'm in my Course Files folder, and
- 05:17 I'm going to click in this search area just here.
- 05:21 If you remember we added things like tags, and we also had author information and
- 05:26 lots of other document properties.
- 05:28 So if I want to search by one of those tags, I can type in tag: and
- 05:33 then type in one of the search tabs.
- 05:36 So something I tagged this document with was the word sales.
- 05:41 So if I click the Arrow,
- 05:42 you can see that it's pulled up exactly that document where I have this tag.
- 05:47 If I click the Cross to clear that, I can search by author and then add in my name.
- 05:56 And this should pull up a whole host of different documents because I have many
- 05:59 documents that are authored by myself.
- 06:02 I can type in company and then land code and click on Search.
- 06:08 And again, it's going to find that same document.
- 06:11 So document properties essentially have a dual purpose.
- 06:15 They allow you to add information into your document that could be useful for
- 06:19 yourself or other people who are accessing the file.
- 06:22 And you can also utilize them in order to find files as well.
- 06:25 And the final thing I just talked to you about was, remember when we were
- 06:29 looking at Document Properties when we were looking at the statistics,
- 06:33 it mentioned hidden slides.
- 06:35 And I was told that I had 0 hidden slides, which is true.
- 06:39 Now if you're thinking to yourself what is the hidden slide,
- 06:43 you can choose to hide any of the slides in your presentation.
- 06:46 Now hiding doesn't delete the slide, it just means that when you run
- 06:50 the slideshow, it's basically going to skip over any hidden slides.
- 06:53 So a simple way to do this is to right click.
- 06:56 So let's use slide 2 as our example.
- 06:58 And you'll see right towards the bottom of the contextual menu,
- 07:01 I have the hide slide option.
- 07:03 If I click that, you'll notice that slide number 2 now has a cross through it.
- 07:08 And if I go back to my document properties, you can see that now this is
- 07:12 updated and it's telling me that I have one hidden slide.
- 07:16 So document properties are fairly straightforward.
- 07:19 I do recommend you take the time to add information into here because,
- 07:22 it's going to be beneficial to you in the long run.
- 07:25 That's it for now.
- 07:26 I will see you in the next lesson.
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