The usual ori­ent­a­tion for Power­Point slides is landscape – for present­a­tions on monitors and projector screens, this is the pre-set format and offers the perfect solution for all new projects at first glance. However, for some content it makes sense to present Power­Point slides in portrait view. The best example of this are images and videos taken or saved in portrait view, and which would therefore be more effective on slides that are also ori­ent­ated ver­tic­ally.

In this article you can find out how to convert your whole Power­Point project to portrait, or to just present some selected Power­Point slides in portrait view.

Tutorial: Set portrait view in Power­Point – how it works

As practical as Power­Point portrait view might seem at first glance, im­ple­ment­ing it is actually quite com­plic­ated. One thing to keep in the back of your mind, for example, is that most present­a­tion en­vir­on­ments, such as pro­jec­tion screens, etc., are tailored to and optimised for landscape format. Another barrier is that the Microsoft program isn’t really set up to handle a mix of ho­ri­zont­ally- and ver­tic­ally-ori­ent­ated slides within one project – in the standard settings, you can only rotate all the Power­Point slides together.

In the following step-by-step tutorial we will show you first how the general con­ver­sion to Power­Point portrait view works. After that, we’ll explain how you can use Power­Point slides both in portrait and in landscape view within the same document, despite the re­stric­tions in the settings.

How to change your current Power­Point project to portrait

As already mentioned, the con­ver­sion from landscape to portrait view is auto­mat­ic­ally applied to your entire Power­Point project. If you’re planning to present all slides in your Power­Point ver­tic­ally, you can achieve this very easily by changing the page ori­ent­a­tion. For this, you need to do the following:

Open the Power­Point project that you’d like to present in portrait view, and open the “Design” tab:

Click on the “Slide Size” button, which you can find in the top-right part of the menu, and select the option “Custom Slide Size”:

You can now organise the size of in­di­vidu­al slides in this new dialog box. To simply convert the Power­Point slides to portrait, though, you don’t need to go through all the work of cal­cu­lat­ing meas­ure­ments – simply select the option “Portrait” under the entry “Slides” (“Ori­ent­a­tion”). Then, click “OK”:

The present­a­tion software will then open a dialogue box where you can op­tion­ally choose whether the size of the content in your current slides should be maximized when changing to Power­Point portrait ori­ent­a­tion, or whether the program should auto­mat­ic­ally calculate a suitable format.

Tip

If you’re not sure which option to choose, go for the “Ensure Fit” scaling – so you can make sure that the content also fits onto the slides! If you’re unhappy with the result, you can quickly discard the change using the “Undo” function.

Click either the “Maximize” or the “Ensure Fit” button to set Power­Point portrait view:

If the con­ver­sion has worked, Power­Point will now show your slides in portrait view (both the one currently selected and the miniature versions in the sidebar):

A quick summary of the in­di­vidu­al steps:

  1. Open the Power­Point project
  2. Open the “Design” tab
  3. Click on the button “Slide Size” and select the “Custom Slide Size” option
  4. Select the option “Portrait” under “Ori­ent­a­tion” “Slides”
  5. To finish, click on “Maximize” or “Ensure Fit”

Power­Point: How to present in­di­vidu­al slides in portrait view

Because there is no native function to switch between vertical and ho­ri­zont­al slides in Power­Point, you’ll need to fiddle around a little if what you want is a present­a­tion with both format types. The easiest solution in this case is to create two different present­a­tions – one in portrait and one in landscape view – and to merge these together. The audience won’t notice this two-part structure.

Tip

Save both present­a­tions in one folder before linking them. If you want to save the documents ex­tern­ally later, you simply have to copy this folder, removing any possible com­plic­a­tions with linking.

The following example shows how to set up this link:

A standard present­a­tion in landscape view is to be com­ple­men­ted with a Power­Point slide in portrait view after the first slide. For this, the first step is to select an object on the first slide that forms the basis for the con­nec­tion. We have chosen a text box as an example on this occasion. As soon as this object is clicked on, open the “Insert” tab and then click on the “Action” button” in the “Links” menu group:

Power­Point then opens the “Action Settings” menu, where you first have an important decision to make: If the linked present­a­tion or the in­di­vidu­al Power­Point slide in portrait view is to be opened with a mouse click, the ap­pro­pri­ate tab “Mouse Click” is already selected. If, however, you want the vertical slide to open when you place your cursor over the link object, first change to the “Mouse Over” tab.

In both cases, you can continue with the linking process by high­light­ing the “Hyperlink to” option and clicking on the point “Other Power­Point Present­a­tion” in the list:

Now go to the location of the present­a­tion that is to be linked, select it, and click “OK”:

Confirm the link con­figured by clicking on “OK” again. The linking object selected should now be expanded with a clickable link or a “mouse over” link to the second present­a­tion. If you click on this or scroll over it with the cursor, the second present­a­tion with the Power­Point slide in portrait view will open:

Now, you can create a con­nec­tion that leads back to the first document. Another object is needed for the link – you have to select this object before pressing the “Action” button in the “Insert” tab.

In “Action Settings” you can also decide between one of the two triggers (either click or mouse over). Select the option “Hyperlink to” and then “Other Power­Point Present­a­tion.” Now provide the storage location of the first present­a­tion document with the landscape slides, and confirm your selection with “OK.”

As the landscape present­a­tion in the example has more than one slide, Power­Point shows another dialogue box in which the des­tin­a­tion slide can be selected. As slide 1 can’t be shown again, the choice has to be slide 2:

Note

The number of se­lect­able link des­tin­a­tions listed by Power­Point cor­res­ponds to the number of available slides in the document that are to be linked.

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