Add pages to a presentation

When you add a new presentation to a project, the presentation view opens empty and the Contents pane does not contain any pages. A presentation must contain at least one page to be displayed in full-screen mode or shared to a file on disk. You can insert new pages using any of the four available page types, or create pages based on existing pages. This means that you can copy an existing page, or, for map pages only, you can work in an activated map page to create map pages from an updated extent.

The type of page determines the background for the page and fills the space of the page. For example, a map or scene selected for a map page is inserted into the presentation as the entire page. If needed, the background position can be customized to a different percentage of the page using the page property settings. Presentation overlay elements such as text, images, and shapes are added to a page after the page is created.

Add Pages

To add pages to a presentation, complete the following steps:

  1. In the Contents pane, click the Insert Page button.

    The Insert New Page pop-up dialog box appears.

  2. On the Insert New Page dialog box, click one of the page types listed at the top: Map, Blank, Image, or Video.

    Map Map Page

    Browse the gallery to choose the map or scene to create the map page. Click the filter drop-down menu in the upper corner to only show views for a particular map. Optionally, turn on the Show open views only toggle button to reduce the list if the project contains maps that are not open views.

    Hover over any thumbnail in the gallery to view source information, for example, to determine whether the view is a stored bookmark or at a particular scale.

    Blank Blank Page

    Choose from three blank page templates: a blank page with no placeholder text, a blank page with a title element, or a blank page with title and paragraph body text elements.

    Image Image Page

    Click Browse to open the Insert Picture dialog box to set the image source file. Image pages support BMP, EMF, GIF, JPG, PNG, and TIFF file formats.

    Video Video Page

    Click Browse to open the Insert Video dialog box to set the video source file. Video pages support the AVI, MP4, MPEG, and GIF file formats.

  3. Click Insert on the Insert New Page dialog box to create the new page and close the dialog box.

    The page is displayed in the presentation view and a thumbnail of the page is added in the Contents pane. The page area is defined by the black outline in the presentation view. Any elements added to the page in the presentation view and placed outside the page border are not displayed in full-screen mode.

  4. To add more pages to the presentation, do any of the following:
    • Click the Insert Page button again to access the page types.
    • On the Insert tab, in the Page group, click the button for the specific page type to insert New Map Page New Map Page, New Blank Page New Blank Page, New Image Page New Image Page, or New Video Page New Video Page.
    • Right-click an existing page in the Contents pane and click Duplicate to add a copy below the page. Drag the page to change the order if necessary.
    • Copy a page to paste below any selected page. If no page is selected, it is pasted at the bottom of the list.
    • Create a map page from an activated map page.

The Contents pane for a presentation can help you view and manage the pages, elements, and map layers as a list. You will primarily use the Contents pane to keep track of the pages you have added and the order in which you want to present them. You can also control which pages are visible, lock any page or element to prevent unwanted edits, reorganize or remove items, and access context menu commands.

Set up a page

Once a presentation contains pages, you can set the presentation properties for page size, units, and orientation, and use design aids. Presentation design aids include page rulers, guidelines, and snapping to place elements precisely on a page.

Access rulers and guides on the Presentation tab in the Show group. Snapping Snapping is enabled from the status bar at the bottom of the presentation view. Snapping has three modes for presentations: snapping to guides, to other elements, or the page boundary.

Rulers wrap the presentation view. The ruler increment adjusts to match the zoom level of the page. Guides are visual references drawn on the view for alignment and snapping. Rulers and guides do not display in the full screen display or any exported format of the presentation. To show rulers and guide for the current presentation, do the following:

  1. Ensure the presentation view is the active view.
  2. In the Show group on the Presentation tab, check Rulers.

    Rulers are now displayed in the view: one horizontal and one vertical.

  3. To customize the ruler, right-click a ruler and click Ruler Properties.

    On the Ruler Properties dialog box, you can set the unit and set the smallest interval the ruler displays. While the ruler interval adjusts to the zoom level of the page, the ruler never shows a value smaller than what is set.

  4. In the Show group on the Presentation tab, check Guides.

    Any guide in the view is displayed. Use this check box to turn guides on or off in the display without deleting them.

  5. Optionally, right-click a ruler and click Add Guide to insert a single horizontal or vertical guideline at the location you clicked on the ruler.
  6. Optionally, right-click a ruler and click Add Guides to open the Add Guides dialog box and add multiple guides at once by specifying orientation and placement properties.
  7. To delete guides, right-click a guide along the ruler and click Remove Guide or click Remove All Guides.
  8. Right-click a ruler and uncheck Rulers to hide them from the view.

Learn more about rulers and guides

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