By using the “Page setup” feature under the “File” menu, you can modify the slides from the traditional landscape widescreen format that is used for presentations. Doing this can allow you to create 8.5x11 portrait (or landscape) sheets, making it easy to create your own PDFs. Or you can get creative to modify it for your purposes. This video shows you how.

Once you have inserted an image in your slide, there are then options available to edit it for your purposes. You can give it a border, crop it, crop it into a shape, and format it. The video below will walk you through all of the format options in addition to the others mentioned here.

If you want to add video or audio to your presentation, it’s incredibly easy. All videos must be either from YouTube or already in your Google Drive. Any audio must also be uploaded into your Google Drive. Google has also made it easy to play either of these files automatically and edit them a bit as well. The video below walks you through how to insert and manipulate audio and video files.

While creating a more advanced presentation, you may need or want to have more detailed text, charts, or tables. Charts and tables in Google Slides can be linked to Sheets you have in your Google Drive. If you don’t have any data already in Sheets, you can still insert charts and tables, but the chart will prompt you to edit data in Sheets to create the chart. The video below demonstrates each of these skills.

The Google Support page shown and linked here also provides information on how to copy a single slide for use in another presentation or to paste into a Google Doc, which will subsequently give you the option to link the presentation from which it came. The video goes over this process as well.

Google Slides provides some wonderful themes to use for your presentation. However, if you need or want to modify the color scheme, the text style, or the graphics of these themes, you have that option as well. Watch the video below to find out how.

The screenshot here shows the lower part of the Google Support page referring to themes. Once at that link, you will need to scroll to the section titled “Change theme”.

Once you have completed a Google Slides presentation, you may have the need to download it. In the “File” menu, you will see the “Download” option. You can download your presentation as an Office PowerPoint file if necessary, but you can also download it as a PDF which is helpful if you were using it to create worksheet or other classroom materials to share electronically. This “Download” option also gives you the capability to download single slides as images.

If you want to print and/or copy your presentation, you have several options for doing so, also under the “File” menu, under “Print settings and preview”.

The video below gives step by step instructions on how to follow through with each of these options.