GOOGLE SLIDES
By Purmeidianto
SECONDARY
GLOBAL INBYRA SCHOOL
Getting started with your presentation
Google Slides allows you to create dynamic slide presentations. These
presentations can include animation, narration, images, videos, and much
more. In this lesson, you'll learn about the Google Slides interface and the
basics of setting up your document, including the menu and shortcut
toolbars, zoom settings, and choosing a theme.
The Google Slides interface
When you create a new presentation in Google Slides, the interface for Slides
will appear. This interface displays the toolbar, along with the main view of
your presentation. It allows you to create and modify slides, choose
a theme, and share the presentation with others.
Click the buttons in the interactive below to learn about the interface for
Google Slides.
Choosing a theme
When you first create a new presentation, Google Slides will prompt you to
choose a theme. Themes give you a quick and easy way to change the overall
design of your presentation. Each theme has a unique combination
of colors, fonts, and slide layouts. Select a theme from the panel on the
right side of the window, and it will be applied to your entire presentation.
You can choose from a variety of new themes at any time, giving your entire
presentation a consistent, professional look. If you want to change your
theme, you can open the Themes panel again by clicking
the Theme command on the shortcut toolbar.
Working with the Google Slides
environment
Here, we'll show you how to navigate the Google Slides environment. You'll
learn how to use the menu and shortcut toolbars, zoom in and out,
and play your presentation.
The menu and shortcut toolbars
The Google Slides interface uses a traditional menu system with a shortcut
toolbar. The menus contain commands grouped by function. The shortcut
toolbar has buttons for some frequently used commands.
Showing and hiding the menus
You can choose to minimize the menu bar to free up more space to display
your slides. Click the Hide the menus command to hide the menu bar,
leaving only the shortcut toolbar at the top of the window. Click it again to
show the menu bar again.
Zooming in and out
You can zoom in and out of your presentation with the Zoom shortcut.
Click Zoom on the shortcut toolbar, then move the mouse cursor over your
slide. The cursor will change to a magnifying class with a plus sign inside of it.
Now you can left-click to zoom in or right-click to zoom out. Press Escape on
your keyboard to return your cursor to normal.
Within the View drop-down menu, hover over Zoom and there you will see
options to set the zoom more precisely.
Playing the presentation
When you are ready to show your presentation—or if you want to see what it
will look like during a presentation—click the Present button to the right of
the menus. You can also click the drop-down arrow for additional
presentation options.
Adding pictures and shapes
Adding pictures and shapes can make your presentations more interesting and
engaging. The picture and shape tools in Google Slides also let you customize
your images by cropping, reordering, changing colors, and adding other
formatting.
Inserting pictures
You can insert a picture from a file on your computer onto any slide. Google
Slides even includes tools for finding online pictures and
adding screenshots to your presentation.
To insert a picture:
1. Open the Insert menu, then select Image.
2. You can choose an image from a number of sources. In our
example, we'll Search the web.
3. The Google images search pane will appear on the right.
Enter your search terms to find an image you're interested in.
4. Click the desired image, then click Insert.
5. The image will appear on the selected slide.
Formatting pictures
There are a variety of ways to format the pictures in your slide show. Google
Slides has tools to resize and rotate the picture, crop the picture, adjust the
image, and more.
To crop an image:
1. Select the image you'd like to crop, then click
the Crop command.
2. Cropping handles will appear around the image. Click and
drag one of the handles to crop the image. Make sure the
mouse is right over the black cropping handle so you don't
accidentally select a resizing handle.
3. Click the Crop command again. The image will be cropped.
To crop an image to a shape:
1. Select the image you want to crop, then click the Mask
Image drop-down arrow next to the Crop command. From
the drop-down menu, hover over a category; then, choose the
desired shape that you want to insert.
2. The image will appear formatted as the shape.
After cropping the image to a shape, you can click the crop button again to use
the cropping handles and adjust the size and proportions of the shape.
Image options
You can adjust an image's transparency, brightness, contrast, and more. To
do this, select the image, then click Format options on the toolbar or in the
Format menu. The Format options pane will open.
Moving and resizing pictures
• To move an image: Select the image, then drag it to the
desired location.
• To resize an image: Select the image you want to
resize. Sizing handles will appear. Click and drag the sizing
handles until the image is the desired size. You can use the
corner sizing handles to change the
image's height and width at the same time.
• To rotate an image: When the image is selected, click and
drag the rotation handle above the image.
Inserting shapes
Shapes are a great way to make your presentation more interesting. Google
Slides gives you a lot of different shapes to choose from, and they can be
customized to suit your needs, allowing you to use your own color palette,
preferences, and more.
To insert a shape:
1. Click the Shape command on the toolbar to open the drop-
down menu. Hover over one of the categories, then choose a
shape.
2. Click and drag in the desired location to add the shape to
the slide. In our example, we'll draw the shape on top of the
robot image for now.
3. The shape will appear on the slide.
Formatting shapes
In Google Slides, you can modify shapes in a variety of ways to suit your needs.
Shapes can be moved and resized just like images, and they have a few other
options for adjustment.
Some shapes have the option to change their dimensions and proportions. To
adjust the proportion of a shape, select it, then click and drag the diamond
handle.
You can further customize shapes by changing their fill color, line color, line
weight, and line dash. Select a shape, then click one of the four shape format
commands to see the menu for that option.
Reordering objects
In Google Slides, each slide may have multiple items, such as pictures, shapes,
and text boxes. When objects are inserted into a slide, they are placed
on levels according to the order in which they were inserted into the slide.
In our example, we drew a teardrop shape on the top level, obscuring the robot
picture behind it. We can reorder it to put it behind the other objects.
To reorder an object:
1. Select the object you want to reorder.
2. Open the Arrange menu, select Order, then choose how
you'd like to reorder the object. In our example, we'll
select Send to back.
3. The object will reorder. In our example, the shape is a nice
background for the robot image.
You can arrange multiple overlapping objects using the Order commands. In
our example, we selected the robot image and used
the Send backward command. The robot image is behind the cloud, but in front
of the teardrop shape.
Challenge!
1. Open our example file. Make sure you're signed in to
Google, then click File > Make a copy.
2. Select slide 15 and resize the picture of the robot so it's as
tall as the slide.
3. Crop the robot so the robot's hands and everything below
them are no longer showing.
4. Move the robot to the lower-right part of the slide.
5. To the left of the robot picture, insert a speech bubble
shape.
Hint: Speech bubbles can be found in the callout category.
6. With the shape still selected, drag the yellow diamond
handle toward the robot's mouth, then type the words Go
forth and be safe!
7. Change the font size of the text to 30 pt and the alignment of
the text to center align.
8. Change the fill color of the shape.
9. When you're finished, your slide should look something like
this:
Adding transitions and animations
Presentations don't have to be a series of static slides. You can
add animations to objects on slides or transitions to entire slides.
A transition can be as simple as fading to the next slide, or it can be a more
flashy effect. Any object can be animated, making it move or fade in or out of
the slide. Google Slides makes it easy to apply these effects to some or all of
your slides, adding emphasis or polish to your presentation.
Watch the video below to learn how to add transitions.
Google Slides has one pane to manage all of your transitions and animations.
The Motion pane will allow you to configure the transition and all animations
for the current slide.
Transitions and animations are best used in moderation. Adding too many of
these effects can make your presentation look a little silly and can even be
distracting to your audience. Consider using mostly subtle transitions and
animations—or not using them at all.
To add a transition:
1. Select the desired slide, then click the Transition command
on the toolbar.
2. The Motion pane will appear. Underneath Slide Transition,
open the drop-down menu; then, select a transition.
3. The transition will be applied to the current slide. You also
can adjust the speed of the transition or apply the same
transition to all slides.
To add an animation:
1. Right-click the desired object, then select Animate.
2. The Motion pane will appear. Underneath Object
Animations, a default animation will be added to the
selected object and displayed in the pane.
3. Open the drop-down menu and select the desired animation.
If the Motion pane is already open and you want to add more animations, you
can select an object and click Add animation. You can also add multiple
animations to one object.
Watch the video below to learn more about using animations.
Animation options
By default, an effect starts playing when you click the mouse during a slide
show. If you have multiple effects, you will need to click multiple times to
start each effect individually. However, by changing the start option for each
effect, you can have effects that automatically play after the previous effect
or with the previous effect.
If the object is a placeholder or text box, the By paragraph check box will be
displayed. It determines if the animation is applied to the entire box or if it
animates each paragraph of text in the box one at a time.
You can also adjust the speed of the animation by dragging the animation
speed slider.
