Here Is What You Need to Start Using Google Slides

How to Use Google Slides - Instructions

Google’s support site offers a lot of clear and useful instructions on how to use Slides.

We’ve linked to the most commonly-needed instructions here.

In a couple of spots, where Google has left some gaps, we’ve added our own instructions.

Create a Slides Presentation

• Create a new presentation

• Create a new presentation from a template

Share and Collaborate with Others

• Share files and folders with people and choose whether they can view, edit, or comment on them

• Send an email to collaborators

Edit and Format an Entire Presentation

• Add, delete, and organize slides (i.e. choose the order in which they are presented)

• Choose a theme for your presentation

• Import a new theme

• Edit your theme colors

• Change the background color or image

• Use your own image as the background for the entire presentation

• Add bookmarks, links, section breaks, and page breaks

Edit and Format an Entire Slide

• Add, delete, duplicate, and organize slides

• Change the layout on a single slide

• Use “Explore” to see and use suggested alternate themes and layouts for a 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 Content

Add, edit and format text, shapes, and lines

• Add and edit text, shapes, and lines

• Add special characters to a slide

• Add a bulleted or numbered list

• Align text, shapes, images, diagrams, and other objects on a slide using rulers and guides

• Move, rotate, and change the size of an object on a Slide

• 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, edit, and format tables, charts, diagrams, docs, or slides from another presentation to a slide

• Add and edit tables

• Link a chart, table, or Google Doc to a Slide

• Insert a diagram

Embed a “live” link to a table, chart, or slide from another presentation

• Embed tables, charts, or slides from another presentation into a Slides presentation (this will keep everything updated across all files and file types)

• Edit, update, or unlink a chart, table, or slide

Add audio

• Add audio to a presentation

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>Format Options, or right click on the video after you’ve added it to the slide to open Format Options.

• This will open the Format Options dialog box on the right side of your editing screen.

• Enter the times you want the video to start and stop into the text entry boxes below the video thumbnail.

Auto-play a video when you get to a slide

• Go to Format Options, and check the “Autoplay when presenting” box.

Mute a video so that you can talk over it when you’re presenting

• Go to Format Options and check the “Mute audio” box.

Add animations

• Animate text or images on a slide

• Add an animated GIF to a slide

• Animate slide transitions

Present your work

• Present a Slides presentation

• Present with speaker notes

• Present with Chromecast

Move between slides in a presentation

• Move between slides in your presentation

• Advance Slides automatically

• Go to bookmarks and links

Manage Q&A

Take a break during your presentation and temporarily make the screen all black or all white

• At any time, you can change the presentation slide to all white or all black with keyboard shortcuts.

• The keyboard shortcut is “b” for black and “w” for white.

• You can 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! No more pesky switching between software.

• Merge multiple Slides presentations into a single Slides presentation (useful if you’re asking students to present/comment on others’ work, especially visual work)

• 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.

Big Brother is Watching You and Your Slides

(Which might be good, if you want to see whether your students are engaging with your Slides content.)

• View the activity on your Google Slides presentation to see if students are accessing it.

• Don’t let others see your own viewing, commenting, and editing activity in G-Suite files. (You can do this for one file only or all files.)

Other Handy Resources

• This is a really helpful curated list of easy-to-follow Google Slides instructions and ideas: https://www.theedublogger.com/google-slides/