Format PowerPoint slides

When MindManager creates a multi-slide PowerPoint presentation, it optimizes the slide layouts to distribute the topics evenly and avoid topic repetition.

The Export as a Microsoft PowerPoint Slide command does not use this feature, rather, the entire map is presented on a single slide.

If you want to fine-tune the slides before you export your presentation you can preview and change the slide formatting in the Format Microsoft PowerPoint Slides task pane. You may also add or remove slides from the presentation here, and update the slide list to include any new topics.

Its a good idea to finalize the overall content of your presentation before changing the formatting of individual slides. If you change only the topic content or add a topic on an existing slide, this is reflected immediately in the slide previews and does not impact the rest of your slides. But if you add a topic that will produce a new slide it can affect the presentations's structure.

Preview slides

Shaded areas will appear on your map showing how topics will be grouped and on which slides they will appear. A preview image of each slide displays in the task pane.

If you make changes to your map and want to see the latest slides, click the arow on any slide in the task pane and click Refresh Slide Preview or Refresh All Previews.

Generate slides

The Generate slides setting at the top of the task pane determines how and when slides are generated and what options are available for customization. The Automatic setting always regenerates the entire presentation and allows only limited customization. The Manually option lets you regenerate only the slides you indicate on-demand. It offers more options for customizing your slide formats and allows you to add or remove individual slides, but can take more effort to use.

The visual cues for the slides' topic arrangement indicate that it is time to regenerate if topics are omitted from slides or if you see overlapping slide layouts. This can be the result of adding topics that require additional slides or by changing the slide type to include more or less information.

If you delete topics from the map, they are automatically removed from the slides in the task pane - no slide regeneration is required before you export the presentation.

The first time your presentation is generated MindManager uses automatic generation: all the topics are distributed among slides in an optimized fashion. MindManager automatically determines the slide type and information depth to use on each slide to avoid duplicating topics.

You can change the slide's appearance (whether to include an image and the image source) but not the depth of information it contains.

If you have set the Automatic Layout Settings to use PowerPoint objects on slides, multi-level topics are represented on slides as objects, not as bulleted text, and no changes are possible in this mode.

Change the Generate slides: setting to Manually to:

increase or reduce the depth of information for individual bulleted slides in your presentation
override the export dialog's Automatic Layout Settings and use bulleted text for select slides.

If you add new topics that require new slides they are not automatically created (as indicated by the slide cues on the map) and you'll need to regenerate the presentation.

Click Regenerate whole map to re-create the entire presentation. In addition, your entire presentation gets re-generated automatically whenever you open the Format Microsoft PowerPoint Slides task pane or when you export the presentation.

In this mode you can tweak MindManager's automatic topic distribution and layout by changing the individual slide types or bullet depth to include more or less information on any slide.

As a result of this customization some topics may be omitted (not included on a slide) or duplicated (included on overlapping slides). Manual mode allows you to add and remove individual slides from the presentation to remedy this without affecting the rest of the slides. This mode is also convenient if you add new topics or if you want to exclude some of the topics from slides.

Include omitted topics

Click on an omitted (unshaded) topic.
Do one of the following:

- Double-click the placeholder that appears in the task pane
- Click Add slides for the selected topic

You can include some subtopics without creating additional slides by increasing the bullet depth of the slide for the parent topic.

Remove unwanted slides

Select the topic(s) on your map.
Do one of the following:

Click Delete slides of the selected topics at the top of the task pane
Right-click on the slide preview and click Delete slide.

The slide will be removed from your presentation but the topic will not be removed from your map.

Change slide types

Its usually a good idea to finalize the content of your presentation before you begin formatting individual slides. When you change the format of a slide MindManager will refresh the slide previews automatically.

* If you have the Generate Slides option set to Manually you can change the slide type or bullet depth to increase or decrease the amount of information on the slide. MindManager will adjust your presentation accordingly, but you may have to add slides to include all the topics or remove slides to avoid duplication. If you find that topics are omitted or duplicated on your slides you can use the steps outlined above under Generate slides manually to add or delete them.

You can use these settings ▼ shown at the bottom of the pane for the selected slide.

Topic depth:
This setting applies only to slides that already display bullets, and is only available if you have Generate slides set to Manually.

If you increase the topic depth you may find that you are repeating topics on more than one slide. You can remedy this by deleting the duplicate slides.

If you decrease the topc depth you may have "leftover" topics that aren't included on slides. You should add these using the steps above.

Image source:
For slides with images you can choose the map image with 1 level of subtopics, or the map image with 2 levels of subtopics. Choose No image if you want to suppress the image. A space will be left on the slide where the image would have otherwise displayed.

PowerPoint Objects:
You may see these changes to slides exported as PowerPoint objects.

The display of callouts, their background color, the PowerPoint Template selection, and more can be set in the PowerPoint Export Format Settings dialog. You can change these options while formatting your slides by clicking Settings at the bottom of the task pane, or when the settings are displayed on export.