Table of Contents PowerPoint

Adding a table of contents or an agenda to your PowerPoint presentation is essential for providing your audience with a clear structure of your presentation. An agenda slide or table of contents slide should provide an easy to read overview of your presentation as well as provide tracking of your current position in the presentation.This can be done automatically if you have Ampler for PowerPoint, but it can also be done manually by following the steps below.

How to create a table of contents (ToC) in PowerPoint?

Creating a table of contents in PowerPoint is easy. Basically you create a slide with a list of all the topics in your presentation, then copy this overview to the head of each section. Finally you update the tracker on each slide to correctly show the current section:

1. Create a new slide for and write ‘Table of Contents’ in the tagline
2. Add a text box and type in the topics of your presentation
3. Format the text box with bullets and decorate the slide as needed
4. Add a tracker for the current section in the table of contents marking the topic
5. Copy the table of contents slide to the head of each section in your presentation
6. Change the tracker on each table of contents slide to match each section
7. Done! 🙂

How to update the topics of the ToC in PowerPoint?

Often times when working on a presentation, the name of the topics or sections change over time. In these cases you need to update all the table of contents slides with the new names. Luckily this is easily achieved with clever use of the feature ‘Replace‘:

1. Navigate to a table of contents slide in the presentation
2. Mark the name of the topic that you wish to change and press ‘CTRL+C’ to copy
3. Press ‘CTRL+H’ or click ‘Replace’ in the ‘Editing’ group in the ‘Home’ tab
4. Press ‘CTRL+V’ to paste the old topic name in the ‘Find what’ field
5. Write the new topic name in the ‘Replace with’ field and use ‘Find next’ and ‘Replace’ to update all the table of contents slides in the presentation

How to change the order of topics in the ToC in PowerPoint?

Changing the order of topics in your PowerPoint presentations can be quite challenging. Not only must all table of contents slides be updated with the new order, the trackers must also be updated on each slide. The best way is to move the section, update the table of contents slides, and manually update all the trackers:

1. Click on the ‘View’ tab and select ‘Slide Sorter’ under the ‘Presentation Views’ group
2. Select the table of contents slide for the section that should be moved and SHIFT select all the related slides of this section
3. Drag all the slides to the new position in the presentation and double click on the table of contents slide
4. Update the order of topics on the table of contents slide to reflect the updated structure
5. Copy the updated text to all other table of contents slides and update the tracker on each slide

How to add slide numbers to a ToC in PowerPoint?

Slide numbers for each topic in the table of contents is a usefull to show the length of each section as well as provide an easy way to navigate the document. However, I strongly recommend not to add slide numbers before the whole deck is final, as to minimize the risk of having to update the page numbers. Add the slide numbers, as you would add any new column to the table of contents slides:

1. Navigate to the first table of contents slide in your presentation
2. Select the text box with the topics
3. Hold CTRL+SHIFT while mouse dragging the text box to the right – this will create a copy that is aligned
4. Change each topic text in the new text box to the corresponding page of the topic
5. Copy the new text box with page numbers to each of the table of contents slides in your presentation

Download free PowerPoint table of contents templates

Sharing is caring as they say. To avoid having to design your own PowerPoint agenda slides, here you can download some free templates for a table of contents slides for PowerPoint:

Table of Contents free templates for PowerPoint

Automated table of contents creation and updating in PowerPoint

Clearly PowerPoint needs to have an automated way to create, maintain, and update table of contents slides in your presentations. For this, and many other reasons, we have created Ampler for PowerPoint, which contains a large number of custom tools to make your life easier when working in PowerPoint. Like the tool ‘Agenda’ to quickly create a professional table of contents slide that updates automatically. If you would like to check it out, you can download a free trial here:

my.ampler.io/download