Slides Pane in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

PowerPoint 2013's work area below the Ribbon continues to be tri-paned, these three panes comprise the Slides Pane, the Slide Area, and the Notes Pane. The Slides Pane is the thin strip on the left side of the PowerPoint 2013 interface that contains thumbnails of all your slides, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below. Long time PowerPoint users will recollect that this pane used to be twin tabbed in all older versions, other than the Slides Pane, you could also access the Outline Pane. The Outline Pane has been removed in PowerPoint 2013, since there's just one pane, there are no tabs for this pane, by default you can just see the Slides Pane now.

Figure 1: Slides Pane within the PowerPoint 2013 interface

Usually when you launch PowerPoint, the Slides Pane is also visible. However, there may be times when the pane may not be visible in Normal View. To bring it back again, choose the View tab of the Ribbon, and click the Normal button. Alternatively, click the Thumbnails button on the left side (highlighted in red within Figure 2). This will bring back the hidden Slides Pane.

Figure 2: Thumbnails button to unhide the Slides Pane

Within Normal View, the Slide Pane allows you to:

1. Move slides easily from one position to the other just by dragging and dropping, as shown in Figure 3.
2. If the presentation has more slides than the length of the pane can display, you'll get a scroll bar to move and navigate up and down, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.
3. 
   Figure 3: Scroll bar for the Slide Pane
3. You can duplicate slides in the Slides Pane by selecting the slide(s) you want to duplicate, then press the Ctrl + D keyboard shortcut. Want more keyboard shortcuts? Get a copy of our PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts: 2013, 2010, 2007 and 2003.
4. To delete slides in the Slides Pane, select the slide(s) you want to delete, then press the Delete key on your keyboard.

Also, you can select one or more slides within the Slide Pane, and perform basic slide level edits such as copying and pasting slides, and rearranging them, etc. Additionally, you can select a slide you need to work with, and then right-click to bring up the contextual menu you see in Figure 4, below. Many of the options in this right-click menu replicate options already discussed in this article.

Figure 4: Right-click context menu for the slide within Slides Pane