Navigating Google Slides
Google Slides is a presentation tool that students can use for creating slide decks, books, and animations. Learn more about accessing and using Google Slides by selecting the topics listed below.
Finding the menu bar and the tool bar in Slides
Menu bar - This is the bar along the top of the window, with File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Slide, Arrange, Tools, Add-ons, and Help submenus.
Tool bar - This is the bar under the menu bar that has buttons with pictures on them. This bar changes in Slides depending on what you've clicked on to edit. If you have selected the slide by clicking on its preview on the left side of the screen, you see buttons that let you to change the background or layout of the slide.
If you have selected a textbox, you'll see buttons that let you edit the size, font, and style of the text.
Also, sometimes some of the buttons are hidden if they don't fit on your screen. You can find hidden buttons by clicking on the "More" button with three horizontal dots.
Helpful buttons & tools in Slides
These are some commonly used buttons and built-in tools within Google Slides.
New slide button - This button helps you insert new slides. You can click the down arrow on this button to choose the layout of the new slide before inserting it.
Explore button - This button opens a side menu that suggests things to add to your deck, such as pictures, formatting, sources of information, or other topics.
Background button - Use this button to edit the background of one slide or of the whole deck at once.
Textbox button - This button inserts a textbox to give you a space to type. You can adjust the text size, font, color, and style by using the tool bar along the top of the screen.
Shape or line buttons - These two buttons let you insert shapes or lines into your slide. You can choose the color of the shape or line, and if it's a shape, you can choose what color the shape is filled with.
Present button - Click this button to switch to presentation mode. This will make the screen only show one slide at a time, in order. You can click the "Esc" button on your keyboard to go back to the editing screen.
Insert menu - This menu allows you to insert many different items into a slide, such as images, shapes, lines, videos, and more.
Slide menu - This menu lets you to edit or adjust different things about your slide, such as the layout, the background, and the transition effect.
Tools menu - The tools menu offers different tools you can use in the slide deck, such as spellcheck, the dictionary, Voice Typing for speaker notes (you speak and Docs types for you), and other accessibility settings.
Turning in a Slides deck to Google Classroom
To turn your Google Slides file into Google Classroom, follow these steps:
- Open the class in Google Classroom, and go to the Classwork tab.
- Find the assignment, and click on it to expand it to show the directions. Then click "View assignment".
- On the right side, find the spaced titled "Your work". Your Slides deck may already be listed there. If so, skip to step 4. If your Slides deck is not already listed there, use the "Add or create" button to search for it in Google Drive and attach it.
- Click the"Turn in" button to submit your work to your teacher.
Have questions about the assignment? Use the "Private comments" section under "Your work" to send a private message to your teacher.
This page was last updated on March 9, 2021