Google’s support site offers a lot of clear and useful instructions on how to use Slides. We’ve curated the most commonly-needed instructions below. We’ve also provided some additional simplified instructions where needed.
Looking for more advanced or creative uses of Slides? See our articles on advanced uses of Slides and creative teaching with Slides.
Table of Contents
Create and Share Slides
Create a Slides Presentation
Share with Others
- Share files and folders with people and choose whether they can view, edit, or comment on them
- Send an email to collaborators
Present Your Slides
- Learn more about presenting your slides, including controls like moving between slides, advancing automatically, using speaker notes and presenting with Chromecast from a mobile device
- Go to bookmarks and links
Add, Edit, and Format Content
Edit and Format an Entire Presentation
- Add, delete, and organize slides (i.e. choose the order in which they are presented)
- Choose, edit, or create a theme or background for your presentation
- Add bookmarks, links, section breaks, and page breaks
Edit and Format a Slide
- Add, delete, duplicate, and organize slides
- Change the layout on a single slide
- Apply a theme to only one slide
- Change the size of your slide (useful if you’re importing content from other files/formats)
- Animate slide transitions
Add, edit and format text, shapes, and lines
- Add and edit text, shapes, and lines
- Add a bulleted or numbered list
- Add special characters to a slide
- Arrange, align, or resize text, shapes, images, diagrams, and other objects on a slide using rulers and guides
- Animate text or images on a slide
- Add bookmarks, links, section breaks, and page breaks
Add, edit, and format images
- Insert or delete images
- Crop and adjust images in a Slides presentation
- Use “Explore” to find and add images or info from other Google files or from the web
Add and edit tables, charts, diagrams, docs, or slides from another presentation
Add audio
Add animations
Add and format video
Add and delete videos
- Insert or delete videos (from YouTube, by URL, or from your own Google Drive)
Start a video at a specific time
- Go to Format, then Format Options, or right click on the video after you’ve added it to the slide to open Format Options
- Enter the times you want the video to start and stop into the text entry boxes below the video thumbnail
Auto-play a video
- Go to Format Options, and check the “Autoplay when presenting” box
Mute a video so that you can talk over it
- Go to Format Options and check the “Mute audio” box
Manage Q&A
Blank your screen during your presentation
- At any time, you can change the presentation slide to all white or all black with keyboard shortcuts (“b” for black and “w” for white)
- Use a blank screen to remove any material from the screen, to pause a presentation, go off topic, or to answer a question
Do a live Q&A session
- Start a live Q&A session with an audience during a presentation with Google Slides
- You can present questions at any time, and people can ask questions from any device. Audience members can also vote on the questions they would like answered
“Level Up” Ideas to Try
- Edit a PowerPoint using Slides
- Merge multiple Slides presentations into a single Slides presentation (useful for creating a gallery or presentation featuring multiple students’ contributions)
- Use handy keyboard shortcuts when you’re presenting, including shortcuts for jumping to a specific slide, turning the laser pointer on and off, and opening speaker notes
- Embed your Slides into your blog or website: (written instructions and video instructions)
- Make a virtual office using Slides
- View the activity on your Google Slides presentation to see if students are accessing it
- Ideas for further creative uses of Slides in your class
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