New Format Task Panes
One of the pet peeves that many slide designers had with previous versions of PowerPoint was the large dialog boxes that sometimes completely covered the slide area. The new PowerPoint 2013 finally addresses this issue with the Format Task Panes, which offer options that enable the user to create and customize objects more intuitively.

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Views in PowerPoint
All put together, PowerPoint 2013 provides you will ten different views. Eight of these views can be accessed from the View tab of the Ribbon. Then click on any of the buttons in the Presentation Views and Master Views group.

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Normal View
PowerPoint 2013's Normal view displays one slide at a time in the Slide area, and is used mainly for editing and creating slides, and shows PowerPoint's typical tri-pane interface that includes the Slides pane, the Slide area, and the Notes pane. If you cannot see the Slides pane in Normal view, scroll down to read a tip that will help you restore that pane.

Duplicate, Rename, and Edit Slide Layouts
Any slide in a PowerPoint presentation is always based on one of the available Slide Layouts (we call these just Layouts for the rest of this tutorial). You can either choose a layout when you add a new slide -- or even change the layout of your existing slides. These available layouts seem to cover most types of slides -- still, you may sometimes want to create a new layout based on your individual requirements.

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Add a New Slide Layout
The default Slide Layouts available in PowerPoint help you choose various placeholder arrangements for your slide content -- it's easy to create good looking slides using them. As an analogy, duplicating and editing a Slide Layout is more like using a coloring book to fill color between the lines of pre-drawn art -- but creating your Slide Layout from scratch is more like starting with a blank sheet of paper and drawing your art before you start coloring between the lines. Decide which of these approaches works best for you before starting. If you prefer the latter approach, follow these steps to create a new Slide Layout.

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Insert New Placeholders within Slide Layouts
A placeholder is a boilerplate container that you can use to fill in with some sort of content. When you launch PowerPoint, you will see those distinctive boxes that invite you to add some content -- haven't you noticed the "Click to add title" suggestions? All these boxes are placeholders -- when selected, these boxes have a grey border around them. You can add your own custom placeholders to the various slide layouts in PowerPoint.