Where everything lives in the Slides editor

The Slides editor brings your content, design tools, and presentation settings into one workspace. Here's where to find the main controls.

1. Presentation controls

The narrow sidebar on the far left contains controls for the whole deck, including privacy, title and description, style, import, export, and slide arrangement. Use Preview to hide the editing interface temporarily, or Present to open the presenting options.

Your work saves automatically. The save button near the top of the sidebar shows the current status; a checkmark means your latest changes are saved. The editor warns you if you try to leave with unsaved changes.

2. Content tools

The panel beside the left sidebar changes with your selection. When nothing is selected, it shows the types of content you can add, such as text, images, shapes, and video. Choose a type to add a block to the current slide.

When one or more content blocks are selected, contextual options appear for configuring the selected content.

3. Slide canvas

Each item on a slide is a content block. Select a block once to configure it. Double-click a text block to edit its text.

Drag a selected block to move it, or use the arrow keys for smaller adjustments. Press Backspace to delete selected blocks when you're not editing text. Locked blocks are protected from these changes.

4. Slide tools and panels

The right toolbar includes slide settings, backgrounds, speaker notes, Auto-animate, and slide removal. It also opens panels for collaboration, Layers, and fragments.

Use Layers to manage overlapping content and access locked blocks. The keyboard-shortcuts and documentation buttons near the bottom of the toolbar provide help while you work.