How to Add a New Slide in PowerPoint

To add a new slide in PowerPoint, select the slide it should follow in the thumbnail pane, then click Home > New Slide (or press Ctrl+M on Windows). To pick the layout first, click the arrow on the lower half instead.

You are building a deck and need another slide after the current one, ideally with the right layout already in place. Steps are for PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 on Windows, with web and Mac notes.

Add a Slide in PowerPoint for Windows

The New Slide button sits in the Slides group on the Home tab (it also appears on the Insert tab). It’s a split button, and the two halves do different things:

• Top half (the slide icon): adds a slide right away, using a layout based on the slide you have selected.
• Bottom half (the label and arrow): opens a gallery of layouts from your theme, with extra commands such as Slides from Outline and Reuse Slides at the bottom.

Here is the full route when you want to choose the layout, following Microsoft’s add, rearrange, duplicate and delete slides page:

1. Open the presentation and make sure you’re in Normal view (View > Normal), so the slide thumbnails show on the left.
2. In the thumbnail pane, click the slide you want the new slide to follow.
3. On the Home tab, click the lower half of New Slide (the part with the arrow).
4. Pick a layout, such as Title and Content, Two Content or Blank. The new slide appears right after the one you selected, and it opens in the main editing area.
5. Click a placeholder (the dotted box that says Click to add title or Click to add text) and type.

If you don’t care about the layout yet, skip the gallery and click the top half of New Slide. You can always change the layout afterward, as explained below.

The Ctrl+M Shortcut

Microsoft’s PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts page for Windows lists Ctrl+M as the shortcut to insert a new slide. It does the same thing as the top half of the button: the slide lands after the current one, and Microsoft’s screen reader guide describes its layout as based on the layout of the current slide. That’s handy when you’re building a run of similar slides. Select a Title and Content slide, press Ctrl+M three times, and you have three more Title and Content slides ready for text.

Note that Ctrl+M doesn’t produce a blank slide unless the current slide uses the Blank layout. If you need an empty canvas for a photo or chart, use the arrow and choose Blank.

Choose Where the New Slide Goes

PowerPoint always inserts the new slide after whatever is selected in the thumbnail pane. That one rule covers every placement you’ll need.

• After a specific slide: click that slide’s thumbnail, then use New Slide or Ctrl+M.
• Between two slides: click in the gap between the two thumbnails. A thin line usually marks where the slide will go. Then click New Slide.
• At the end of the deck: scroll to the bottom of the thumbnail pane and click the last slide first.
• At the very start: add the slide after slide 1, then drag its thumbnail above slide 1.

If a new slide ends up in the wrong spot, drag its thumbnail up or down in the pane. Moving slides is covered in more detail further down.

Pick or Change the Layout

A layout decides which placeholders a slide starts with: a title, one or two content boxes, a picture area, a caption and so on. Choosing the right one up front saves you from drawing text boxes by hand. A quick guide to the common built-in layouts:

Layout	Good for
Title Slide	The opening slide or a new chapter of the talk
Title and Content	Bullet points, a single chart, table or picture
Section Header	Dividers between parts of a long deck
Two Content or Comparison	Before and after, pros and cons, two charts side by side
Title Only	A heading with your own shapes or images below
Blank	Full-slide photos, diagrams or anything custom
Picture with Caption	A featured image with a short description

Your theme or company template may rename these or add its own layouts, so the gallery you see can look different.

Change the Layout After Adding the Slide

1. Select the slide (or several slides) in the thumbnail pane.
2. On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click Layout.
3. Choose the layout you want. Text you already typed usually moves into the matching placeholders.

Keyboard users can reach the layout gallery from the New Slide button too. Microsoft’s screen reader guide describes pressing Alt+H, I, using the arrow keys to move through the layouts and pressing Enter to insert a slide with the chosen one.

When None of the Layouts Fit

Layouts live in the Slide Master. Microsoft’s page on editing and reapplying a slide layout explains the flow: change the layout in Slide Master view, close it, then go back to Normal view, select the slides and use Home > Layout to reapply the updated version. If you’re adjusting a whole template, editing a PowerPoint template walks through the Slide Master in more depth.

Other Ways to Add Slides

New Slide and Ctrl+M handle one slide at a time. These methods are faster when you’re copying a design, borrowing slides from another file or turning an outline into a deck.

Press Ctrl+Enter in the Last Placeholder

According to Microsoft’s Windows shortcut list, when your cursor is in the last placeholder on a slide, pressing Ctrl+Enter inserts a new slide with the same layout. It suits fast typing: finish your bullets, press Ctrl+Enter, and keep going on the next slide without touching the mouse.

Duplicate a Slide

When the next slide should look almost the same as the current one (same images, same chart style, different numbers), copying it is faster than starting from a layout.

1. Right-click the slide’s thumbnail.
2. Choose Duplicate Slide. Microsoft notes that the copy is inserted immediately after the original.
3. Edit the copy.

From the keyboard, Microsoft lists Ctrl+Shift+D to make a copy of the selected slide, and its screen reader guide says Ctrl+D duplicates a slide when the focus is in the thumbnail pane. Be careful with plain Ctrl+D elsewhere: on Microsoft’s main Windows shortcut list it closes the presentation. To copy several slides at once, Ctrl-click their thumbnails first, then right-click one of them; on most versions Duplicate Slide then copies all of them.

Reuse Slides From Another Presentation

Say a sales update needs the same product overview slides your team used last quarter. Instead of rebuilding them, pull them in with Reuse Slides, as described on Microsoft’s reuse (import) slides page:

1. Select the thumbnail the imported slides should follow.
2. On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the arrow below New Slide and choose Reuse Slides.
3. In the pane that opens, choose Open a PowerPoint File, then Browse to the older presentation.
4. Decide on formatting. By default, imported slides take on the look of your current deck. Check Keep source formatting if they should keep their original design.
5. Click a slide in the pane to add it, or right-click any slide there and choose Insert All Slides to bring in the whole file.

Build Slides From a Word Outline

If you’ve drafted the talk in Word, PowerPoint can turn the outline into slides in one go. Microsoft’s create a presentation from an outline page covers the details: build the outline in Word’s Outline view, using Level 1 headings for slide titles and Level 2 headings for the bullet points on each slide, then in PowerPoint select New Slide > Slides from Outline and pick the file in the Insert Outline dialog. Word documents (.docx), Rich Text Format (.rtf) and plain text (.txt) files work.

For a photo-heavy deck where each picture needs its own slide, Photo Album is another bulk option, covered in importing multiple photos into PowerPoint as slides.

Add a Section to Group New Slides

In a long deck, sections keep added slides organized, like chapters in the thumbnail pane. Microsoft’s sections page gives the mouse route: right-click between two slides, select Add Section, type a name in the Rename Section box and select Rename. From the keyboard, Microsoft’s screen reader guide lists Alt+H, T, 1. Slides that follow the section name are grouped under it in the thumbnail pane.

A Worked Example: Building a Project Update Deck

Here’s how the methods combine on a typical short deck, a monthly update for a community garden committee with a title, an agenda, three topic slides, a budget chart and a closing slide.

1. Start a new presentation. Slide 1 already uses the Title Slide layout, so type the title and date.
2. With slide 1 selected, click the New Slide arrow and choose Title and Content for the agenda.
3. Type the agenda bullets, then press Ctrl+M three times. You get three more Title and Content slides for the topics, already in order.
4. Select the last topic slide, use the New Slide arrow again and pick Title Only for the budget chart, so the chart has room below the heading.
5. For the closing slide, reuse the thank-you slide from last month’s deck with Reuse Slides, keeping its formatting if it has a special design.

Every slide lands in order because each insert follows the selected thumbnail, and each one starts with placeholders that match its content.

PowerPoint for the Web and Mac

PowerPoint for the web. Microsoft’s web training steps are short: select the slide you want the new one to follow, then select Home > New Slide. To pick a design, select Layout and choose the type you want. Right-clicking a thumbnail gives you Duplicate Slide here too. Microsoft’s web steps don’t mention Reuse Slides or Slides from Outline, so if you can’t find them, open the file in the desktop app.

PowerPoint for Mac. On most versions the Home tab has the same New Slide button, with an arrow that opens the layout gallery, and the new slide follows the selected thumbnail. Microsoft’s Mac instructions for slides cover duplicating (right-click > Duplicate Slide), deleting (select the slide and press Delete) and rearranging (drag a thumbnail; hold Command to select several). Ctrl+M and the other shortcuts above are Windows shortcuts, so on a Mac use the New Slide button if a key combination doesn’t add a slide.

Working in Google Slides instead? It’s a different app with its own menus and shortcuts, explained in adding a new slide in Google Slides.

If the New Slide Command Misbehaves

New Slide is grayed out. The presentation may be open in a read-only state, such as Protected View. Look for a yellow bar at the top with an Enable Editing button. A file shared with you as view-only can’t be edited until the owner grants edit access.

The new slide has the wrong layout. The top half of the button and Ctrl+M base the layout on the selected slide. Select the new slide and use Home > Layout to switch, or use the arrow next time to choose before inserting.

The layout gallery doesn’t show the layouts you expect. The gallery lists the layouts in the deck’s Slide Master. If you pasted slides from another file, their layouts may have come along with them. Either pick the closest layout and reapply it with Home > Layout, or adjust the master as described above.

Imported or pasted slides changed color or fonts. PowerPoint applies the current deck’s theme by default. Use Keep source formatting in the Reuse Slides pane, or after pasting, look for the Paste Options button next to the pasted slides, which on most versions offers a keep source formatting choice.

Reuse Slides is missing from the menu. Microsoft has published a known issue about the Reuse Slides option missing after an Office update. If you don’t see the command, check that note for its status, install any pending Office updates and, meanwhile, open both files and copy the slides across (select thumbnails, Ctrl+C, then Ctrl+V in the other deck’s thumbnail pane).

A new slide shows up in the editor but not in the show. It may be hidden. A hidden slide’s thumbnail looks faded with a slash through its number; the steps to check and unhide it are in hiding a slide in PowerPoint.

Move, Delete or Undo an Added Slide

• Undo right away: press Ctrl+Z (Command+Z on a Mac) to remove the slide you just added.
• Delete later: right-click the thumbnail and choose Delete Slide. Hold Ctrl (or Shift for a range) to select several thumbnails and delete them together.
• Move: drag the thumbnail to its new position in the pane. For big reorganizations, View > Slide Sorter shows every slide as a grid, which makes dragging across a long deck easier.

Once the slides are in place, you may want to adjust their shape or share the result; see changing slide orientation in PowerPoint and converting a PowerPoint presentation to PDF.

New Slide Questions

Can I add several slides at once?

Yes. Select several thumbnails and duplicate them (this works on most versions), use Insert All Slides in the Reuse Slides pane, or build a batch of slides from a Word outline with Slides from Outline. Pressing Ctrl+M repeatedly also works when you just need several empty slides with the same layout.

Why does the new slide already have text boxes on it?

Those are layout placeholders. Empty placeholders normally don’t show in the slide show, so you can leave unused ones alone or delete them. If you want no placeholders at all, choose the Blank layout.

Is there a right-click option to add a slide?

Many versions of PowerPoint show a New Slide command when you right-click a thumbnail, but Microsoft’s slide instructions use the Home tab button, so that’s the dependable route if the context menu on your version looks different.

Can I add a slide during a slide show?

Not from the presenting screen. Press Esc to leave the show, add the slide in Normal view, then start the show again from the current slide with the From Current Slide command on the Slide Show tab.

For most decks, the habit worth building is simple: click the thumbnail the new slide should follow, then use the New Slide arrow to pick the layout. Everything else above is a shortcut or a fix built on that.