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Google Slides Tutorial

What is Google Slides?

Welcome to the Google slides tutorial series. This is going to be the first article of the series. So read all the articles to have a complete understanding of Google slides.
 
Let’s understand What is Google Slides?

Google slide is a simple slide management and presentation web-based free tool. It is to create slides or presentations offered by google. This is a great alternative to Microsoft PowerPoint.

In fact, it has all the basics and intermediate features of Microsoft PowerPoint. You can add text boxes, shapes, images, articles, charts, animations, transitions, etc.

Document Setup

How to open google Slides?

First, you have to go to drive.google.com. You will see an area where you will be having the recent documents. If you have opened any google slide documents, you can see them in this area. Under, ‘My Drive’, you have ‘Google Slides’.

How to open Google slides from Google drive
How open Google slides google drive new button
How open Google slides google drive new button

Another way to access Google Slides is through slides.google.com. Select the ‘Blank Presentation’ to start a new presentation.

Go to slides.google.com to open Google Slides

Aspect ratio - Page setup

You can resize Google Slides for any paper size, be it portrait mode, Landscape mode. You can make it mobile friendly or vertical or any custom size.

The best aspect ratio is 16:9 but some professionals prefer the standard size which is 4:3 as well. If you want to customize it, you can choose your custom dimension such as – 33.87 cm * 19.05 cm or 11 * 8.5 inches.

To change to portrait in google Slides, you need to go to File -> Page setup

The portrait size is 8.5 * 11 inches. This is the best size for printing

Google slides portrait mode page orientation

Bonus Tips

  • To make the Page setup mobile friendly, the best size is 9 * 16 inches.
  • For Landscape, the size is 11 * 8.5 inches as this is perfect for Landscape style.
Google slides mobile friendly tutorialbrain

Save the Google slides into a folder

It is always advisable to select a particular folder to keep your Google Slide organized.

Although, you can also move your Google slides to a particular folder later as shown below:

Google slides Move to a folder

Google Slides Interface

The Menu bar contains  options like File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Slide, Arrange, etc. I am going to cover this in detail in this tutorial.

The Tool bar is located just below the menu bar.

Google Slides Interface-Tutorialbrain

Toolbar when Text is selected or when the cursor is on a text

If you select a Text, the tool bar will have a particular list of options. If you select an image, the toolbar will have another set of options. Similarly, if you add a shape, the toolbar will be having options specific to shape and so on.

Google slides toolbar for text