Setting Up an Agenda in PowerPoint

Placing an agenda at the beginning of your PowerPoint presentation is an effective way to inform meeting attendees of the focus and topics you will be discussing. While the summary slide feature is no longer available in PowerPoint, you can use a workaround to set up an agenda, which displays your choice of slide titles from the presentation. The key to streamlining the process is to select the right view.

The agenda slide should be at the beginning of the PowerPoint presentation. You can display this slide while setting up for the meeting so that attendees can view it as they enter and settle in to the meeting room. Start PowerPoint and open the presentation to which you want to add an agenda. Select the "View" tab. Click "Slide Sorter" in the Presentation Views group. Click the "New Slide" button in the Slides group of the Home tab and choose "Title and Content." Drag the new, blank slide to the beginning of the presentation. Add a title to the slide, such as the name of the training program or meeting, along with the word "agenda."

Before you begin adding a summary slide titles to your agenda slide, you should format the text box so that the information automatically fits properly onto the slide. Click on the border of the text box to select it. Right-click the border and choose "Format Shape." Click "Text Box" in the left pane of the Format Shape dialog. Select "Shrink Text on Overflow" in the AutoFit section and "Wrap Text in Shape" in the Internal Margin section if these options are not already selected.

An easy way to add agenda topics to the agenda is to copy slide titles and paste them onto the agenda as bullet points. Select the "View" tab. Click "Normal" in the Presentation Views group. Click the "Outline" tab on the navigation pane. Press and hold the "Ctrl" key. Select the titles of the slides you want to add to the agenda. Release the "Ctrl" key, right-click anywhere on the selected titles and choose "Copy." Open the agenda slide, right-click the content section of the slide and choose "Paste." Choose "Use Destination Theme" to paste the titles onto the slide as bullet points.

Make the agenda slide even more functional by adding hyperlinks to the slide titles so that you can click on a topic and go directly to that slide. Select the first agenda topic and press "Ctrl-K" to open the Insert Hyperlink dialog. Choose "Place in This Document" in the Link To section. Click the corresponding slide title and click "OK." Repeat for the remaining agenda topics. Add a duplicate of the agenda slide to the end of the presentation for follow up questions and discussions. Click on the agenda slide. Click the "New Slide" button in the Slides group of the Home tab and choose "Duplicate Selected Slides." Drag the duplicate slide to the end of the slide show.