Info Tab of Backstage View in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

In PowerPoint 2013, all information that you need about your currently active presentation is available in a single easily accessible location. This location is the Info pane of Backstage View. Using the options available within this pane, you can access information about permissions set for the active presentation, prepare your content for sharing, and also possibly recover older versions of unsaved files. In addition, the Info pane also provides access to many more properties that we will discuss on this page.

To access the Info pane, click the File tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 1.

Figure 1: File tab of the Ribbon

This brings up Info Pane, which is the first option within the Backstage View in PowerPoint 2013, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Info Pane of the Backstage View

All the options within the Info Pane of Backstage View are explained below, as marked in Figure 2 above:

A. Protect Presentation

Provides several options to protect your presentation. You can mark your presentation as "final", apply a password, make your presentation read-only, apply a digital signature, or use Information Rights Management (IRM) to control presentation access. The links below provide detailed information about these features:

Mark as Final
Remove Mark as Final

Encrypt with Password
Remove and Change Passwords

Get Started with a Digital Signature
Creating Digital Certificates Outside PowerPoint
Acquire or Create a Digital Signature
Enable Trusted Certificates
Removing Certificates in Internet Explorer
Remove Digital Signatures

B. Inspect Presentation

If you are planning to share your presentation with others, you should inspect your presentation for confidential information, validate its accessibility, and check for compatibility with previous versions. You can also do a spell check, and examine the presentation for hidden data and personal information stored in comments, notes, or document properties. All these tasks can be performed within this area. These links below provide detailed information:

Inspect Document
Check Accessibility
Check Compatibility

C. Versions

In this section you can recover your unsaved presentations (if you have closed your file without saving it, or if your computer or application crashed). The link below provides detailed information:

Recovering Presentations Manually

D. Properties

Here you can create and modify many of the presentation’s properties. These links below provide detailed information:

Properties of a Presentation
Advanced Presentation Properties

We will explore all these options individually in subsequent tutorials of this series.