Get Sorted With PowerPoint's Best Organisational Tool Yet

Lisa works in the creative industry, and like any highly organised individual it never ceases to amaze her just how unorganised other members of her team can be (especially the design team). Part of Lisa's remit is to source images for client presentations. These presentations can sometimes be the inspiration behind the creation of a new branding project, or a national advertising campaign. It's therefore crucial that Lisa organises her images into an easy to understand presentation.

PowerPoint 2010 is just one reason why Lisa has confidence in her ability to undertake her job. Unlike the creatives, she can now always find an image to match a search - whether it's for wild African dogs or designer perfume bottles. And just like Lisa, you can also manage any large PowerPoint presentation just by breaking it down into smaller parts. In PowerPoint 2010 you can use the new Sections feature to organise your slides - a bit like using folders to organise files.

And it's easy to add Sections: in Slide Sorter View right click between two slides where you want to add a Section, then Click Add Section. You can even rename Sections and assign Sections to colleagues. Lisa finds this function particularly useful when she needs to collaborate with disorganised designers.

In the Context menu, you will see that you have many options to remove, rename and move Sections around your presentation, and to organise and label your slides. It's easy to organise and navigate through slides using slide Sections. You can divide a presentation into logical slide groups; rename Sections to help you manage content; and even print specific one Section of slides. Sections are ideal if you are creating a large presentation and the slide titles and numbers need to be organised into different categories in order to navigate easily through the presentation.

In Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, you can make use of named Sections to keep track of groups of slides. And you can assign Sections to colleagues to make ownership clear during collaboration. If you're starting with a blank slate, Sections can even be used to outline the topics in your presentation.

While you can view Sections in either Slide Sorter view or Normal view, Slide Sorter view tends to be more helpful when you want to organise and sort your slides into logical categories that you have defined. For example, Lisa creates names for a Section, using the Normal view or Slide Sorter view, and right-clicking between the two slides where she wants to add a Section. When Lisa need to rename a Section − perhaps the wild dogs have taken a backseat and laughing hyenas are now the order of the day − she simply renames the Section by right-clicking the Untitled Section, and clicking Rename Section, then entering a new name.

It's easy to move a Section up or down in a list of slides by right-clicking the Section that you want to move, and then click Move Section Up or Move Section Down. And you can remove a Section by right-clicking the Section, and then simply selecting Remove Section.

If you need to change the order of your slides, just go to the pane that contains the Outline and Slides tabs, then click the Slides tab. On the Slides tab, select the slide thumbnails that you want to move, and then drag them to their new location. To select multiple sequential slides, click the first slide, and then hold CTRL while you click the other slides that you want.

Although Sections can be printed, you cannot set these up as a Custom Slideshow. However, Sections of slides can be quickly selected and hidden (right click on selected slides within a Section and click Hide Slides). To print a Section, Select the File button, Print and choose the appropriate Section option. Why not take a leaf out of Lisa's book and get organised with PowerPoint 2010 Sections?