Open and Close Tabs of Backstage View in PowerPoint 2019 for Windows

When launched, PowerPoint 2019 for Windows typically opens with Backstage View. If you want to create a new presentation, you can do so using the New tab. If you want to work on any of the already created presentations, you can open them by using the various options in the Open tab. In this tutorial, we explore two of those tabs (see Figure 1):

• Open
• Close

Figure 1: Open and Close options

Open

Follow these steps to open an existing file on your computer in PowerPoint 2019 for Windows:

1. Launch PowerPoint 2019 for Windows and click the File menu, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.
2. 
   Figure 2: File menu
3. This action opens Backstage View. Select the Open tab as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Open tab selected within Backstage view
5. Options within the Open tab are explained below, as marked in Figure 3, above:

A. Recent

6. In this section, you'll find two tabs. The Presentations tab is where you can find a list of your recently accessed presentations. Similarly, the Folders tab shows a list of recently accessed folders. Both of these tabs provide options to pin your files and folders. The pinned content shows up right on top. To pin a presentation or folder, just hover your cursor over any file or folder within the Presentations or the Folders tab, and click the Pin this item to the list icon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4, below. It's a good idea to pin your most frequently used files and folders so that you can access them quickly.
7. 
   Figure 4: Pin this item to the list icon
8. Within the Recent section, you will also find the Recover Unsaved Presentations button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, shown previously on this page. Click this option, and PowerPoint will try to recover unsaved presentations that may have been lost to unexpected PowerPoint or computer crashes.

B. OneDrive

9. Within this tab, you'll find a list of online files stored on your OneDrive. To view and open these files, you need to sign in to your OneDrive account from within PowerPoint or any other Microsoft Office 365program. As you can see in Figure 5, below, we can navigate our OneDrive like a local folder.
10. 
    Figure 5: OneDrive

C. This PC

11. This tab lets you explore files and folders from your local system. You just access the folder where your file is saved, select the file and open it. In Figure 6, you can see a list of folders from where we could open a file.
12. 
    Figure 6: This PC
13. Atop the list of files and folders, you'll also find the Search bar, highlighted in red within Figure 6, above. Just type in a file name or even part of a file name. Results will look through your recent files and folders, and also files shared with you on cloud locations.

D. Add a Place

14. You can also choose the Add a Place option, as shown in Figure 7. You can choose to add multiple OneDrive and OneDrive for Business accounts. These added accounts will show up as multiple places within the Open tab of Backstage view. Learn more in our Add a Place tutorial.
15. 
    Figure 7: Add a Place

E. Browse

16. To open a presentation in an old-fashioned way, click the Browse option. This brings up the Open dialog box, as shown in Figure 8. Navigate to wherever your presentation files are saved, and you can open any of them. You'll find that PowerPoint can open files of various formats (types).
17. 
    Figure 8: Open dialog box
18. Select the presentation or file you want to open, and then click the Open button. Remember that the Open button has a down-arrow next to it. Clicking this down-arrow provides more Open options (see Figure 9). Choose any of them; an explanation of these options follows.
19. 
    Figure 9: Open options
20. Here's a brief explanation of these options:
• Open, the default option is the same as clicking the Open button.
• Open Read-Only lets you open a read-only copy of the presentation. This is great if you don't want to make some changes and overwrite the original presentation.
• Open as Copy lets you open a copy of the presentation, almost like creating a new presentation while leaving the original unaltered.
• Open in Browser works only with certain file formats, such as MHT. See file formats PowerPoint can open.
• Open in Protected View lets you open a presentation with restrictions to protect damage to your computer. You can open potentially dangerous files, such as those downloaded from an unknown source on the Internet in the Protected View.
• Open and Repair allows PowerPoint to attempt repair of a file that is possibly corrupt.

Close

The Close option, highlighted in red within Figure 10 is used to close the active presentation. PowerPoint prompts you to save any unsaved changes.

Figure 10: The Close option