Edexcel IGCSE ICT · Presentation Software
Mastering Presentation Software
The big idea: a master slide controls the whole presentation from one place, and every editing tool you learn (objects, hyperlinks, action buttons, transitions) exists to make a presentation clearer, more accessible, and more interactive for its actual audience.
Quick Summary
- Presentation content in the exam is provided as an
.rtf file and imported using New Slide → Slides from Outline.
- The master slide is the control centre for colours, fonts, headers/footers, and object positioning across every slide at once.
- Editing a presentation means choosing techniques that suit the audience and purpose — not just adding things for the sake of it.
- You can insert objects (images, videos, charts), hyperlinks, and action buttons to make a presentation interactive.
- Screen tips and alt text exist to add accessibility and extra information without cluttering the slide.
- Transitions (between slides) and animations (within a slide) add visual flow and emphasis.
- Slides can be hidden (not deleted) so they're skipped during the slideshow but kept in the file.
- Presentations can be output on screen (looped or presenter-controlled) or printed (full page slides, presenter notes, or handouts).
1. Master Slides
1.1 Creating a Presentation from Imported Content
In the exam, you won't type a presentation's content from scratch — it's handed to you as a rich text format (.rtf) file. Think of an .rtf file like a plain, structured outline: headings and bullet points with no fancy design applied yet. Your job is to pull that structure into PowerPoint and turn it into actual slides.
You do this using the New Slide button on the Home tab, then choosing Slides from Outline. PowerPoint reads the heading levels in the .rtf file and automatically decides what becomes a slide title and what becomes a bullet point beneath it. It's a huge time-saver — instead of manually creating ten slides and typing text into each one, you get the whole skeleton of the presentation built in seconds.
Key Idea
Slides from Outline = automatic slide creation from a structured text file. One click, and headings become slide titles, sub-points become bullets.
Practice Question
A student is given a presentation's content as an .rtf file in their exam. Describe how they would use this file to create the slides.
1.2 What Is a Master Slide?
Imagine you've built a 20-slide presentation, and halfway through you decide the font is wrong, or you want a company logo on every slide, or the page numbers need to move. Editing all 20 slides individually would be painfully slow — and easy to get inconsistent. This is exactly the problem the master slide solves.
A master slide is a single "template" slide that sits behind every other slide in the presentation. Change something on the master slide, and that change ripples out to every slide that uses that layout. It's the same logic as a cookie cutter: shape the cutter once, and every cookie that comes out of it has that same shape — you don't reshape each cookie by hand.
A master slide controls
Colours • Fonts • Headers & Footers • Positioning of objects
Examiner Tip
first (largest) slide
1.3 Auto Slide Numbering
2. Edit a Presentation
why
audience
purpose
2.1 Inserting, Moving, Deleting Slides & Applying Layouts
Slides