Get started with Slides

Slides is where you build presentations in Eigen. Each presentation is a collection of 16:9 slides you can fill with text and images, reorder in a panel on the left, and then present in full screen from the browser.

Create a presentation

Open Slides from the app switcher. Your presentations are stored in Drive, so the main view shows your existing files. Click New slide to create a new presentation and open it straight away.

You can also create a presentation from Drive, or from any other Eigen app that shows the New button.

The editor layout

When you open a presentation, the editor has three areas:

• Slide panel on the left: thumbnails of every slide in order. Click a thumbnail to make that slide active.
• Canvas in the centre: the editing surface for the active slide, at 1920×1080 pixels.
• Properties panel on the right: changes to reflect whatever you have selected. With nothing selected, it shows the slide background options. With an object selected, it shows that object's properties.

Add content to a slide

The toolbar across the top holds, from left to right, an Add slide button, a cluster of drawing tools, an Add image button, and Present:

• Add slide adds a new blank slide at the end of the presentation.
• The tool cluster in the middle has Select for picking objects up, Text for a text box, and the shape and line tools Rectangle, Diamond, Ellipse, Arrow, Line, and Draw. Pick Text, then click the canvas to place a box and start typing.
• Add image opens a picker where you can upload an image from your computer or pick one from Drive.

You can also drag an image file from your computer and drop it directly onto the canvas. To learn more about the shapes and arrows, see Draw shapes and arrows.

Edit text

Double-click a text box to enter edit mode. A floating toolbar appears with Bold, Italic, Bullet list, Numbered list, Quote, and Link. Click outside the text box to leave edit mode.

Select a text box without double-clicking, and the properties panel on the right shows the full range of text options: Font, Size, Color, Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Align, Vertical, Letter spacing, Line height, and Padding.

Move, resize, and rotate objects

Click an object to select it. Handles appear at the edges and corners. Drag the object to move it, drag a corner or edge handle to resize it, and drag the rotation handle at the top to rotate it. You can also type exact values into the X, Y, W, H, and rotation fields in the properties panel.

Hold Shift and click additional objects to select more than one. With two or more objects selected, the properties panel adds an Align section where you can align objects to each other, distribute them evenly, and match their size.

Use the arrow keys to nudge a selected object by one pixel at a time. Press Delete or Backspace to remove a selected object.

Right-click any object for a context menu with Bring to front, Bring forward, Send backward, Send to back, Copy, Cut, Paste, Duplicate, Delete, and Add comment.

Change the slide background

With no object selected, the properties panel shows background options for the active slide. You can set a solid colour, a gradient, or an image from your computer or from Drive. The Apply to dropdown lets you apply the background to just this slide, to this slide and all following ones, or to all slides at once.

Manage slides

Drag a thumbnail in the slide panel to reorder the slides. Right-click a thumbnail to Duplicate or Delete it. The status bar at the bottom of the canvas shows the current slide number and the total.

Present

Click the Present button in the toolbar to enter full-screen presentation mode. Click anywhere to advance to the next slide. Right-click to go back. Slides exits presentation mode automatically after the last slide, or press Escape at any time to return to the editor.

Share and export

Open the File menu in the toolbar to rename your presentation, share it with other people, or download it. Slides can export to PDF or as a web page (File → Download → PDF (.pdf) or Web Page (.html)).

To share, use File → Share or the Share button in the top-right corner of the toolbar. See Share a presentation and comment for the full sharing options.