How to add a PowerPoint Table of Contents slide?

Adding a table of contents in PowerPoint is easy with the PPT Productivity PowerPoint add in.

Standard PowerPoint does not allow you to automatically create a table of contents for your slides, but PPT Productivity add-in for PowerPoint makes it easy to add a Contents page to PowerPoint presentations.

In this post, we focus on how to create a PowerPoint Table of Contents slide using the PPT Productivity Summary Slide Feature. We're also very excited to announce that we recently released a new PowerPoint Agenda Wizard in February 2023. The PPT Productivity PowerPoint Agenda Wizard creates Table of Contents and Meeting Agenda Slides - fast! Contents and Agenda slides created with the Agenda Wizard can be dynamically updated in just a few clicks. Learn more about this exciting new feature from the Agenda Wizard Feature Page on our website.

How can I create a Table of Contents in PowerPoint?

To create a Contents Page or Summary Slide using PPT Productivity, first select the slides that you want included on the Contents Page. You can select all the slides in the presentation (using Ctrl + A in the thumbnail or slide sorter view), or a selection of specific slides, for example only the ‘section header’ slides. Use the PPT Productivity Tag Slides feature to make this part of the process even easier when working with a large presentation!

Once your slides are selected, click the ‘Create Summary Slide’ feature tile on the PPT Productivity top ribbon. And viola! A new Contents Slide will be inserted into your presentation.  The slide titles of each selected slide will appear in a bullet point list.

You can update the summary Slide Title and the slide formatting according to your preferences. You can rename the slide Contents, Table of Contents, Overview, Agenda. For the layout you may prefer to update the bullets style to numbered bullets rather than the default bullet point.

To update the bullets, select the text box, navigate to the Home tab and select the style of numbered bullets required from the Paragraph suites on the Home ribbon. Or use your pre-formatted Paragraph Styles from the PPT Productivity ribbon to set the perfect bullet format, with just one click.

The Summary Slide function is great for quickly creating Contents Pages for your PowerPoint presentations, but you can also use it as the basis of your Executive Summary or as a way to review the storyline of your presentation.

How to make a clickable table of contents in PowerPoint with hyperlinks?

Including hyperlinks in PowerPoint from your contents page to each section/ slide can make navigating through your presentation much easier (especially for large slide decks). To insert links from the Contents slide to specific slides in your presentation,

1. first highlight the text on your Contents/ summary slide,
2. then navigate to the PowerPoint ‘Insert’ tab. Click ‘Link’ and scroll down to the bottom of the dropdown list to select ‘Insert Link’. Or expediate the process by using PowerPoint keyboard shortcut Ctrl + K after you have highlighted the text you want to link.

3. The ‘Insert Hyperlink’ menu will open. On the left-hand side of the ‘Insert Hyperlink’ menu, select ‘Place in This Document’

4. Next choose the relevant Slide Title corresponding with the contents page text you have selected and click ok.

5. The text selected will now be linked to the corresponding slide in the presentation.

6. The linked text now appears on the slide with the font underlined and in a different color. Note - the color of the hyperlinked text in your presentation is determined by your PowerPoint Template’s theme color palette. You can read our article ‘What is the difference between PowerPoint Templates, Themes, and Layouts?’ if you’re interested to learn more about how themes determine colors in your presentation template.

Your Table of Contents slide is now clickable! Clicking on the Hyperlinked text will navigate you directly to that slide in your PowerPoint presentation.

Continue this process until you have linked all the Content items to the pages in your presentation.

How to insert a PowerPoint agenda slide?

You can use the same Create Summary Slide feature to create an agenda slide in PowerPoint.

Start by selecting the slides with headings that you want to include in the Agenda Page. You can select all the slides in the presentation (using Ctrl + A in the thumbnail or slide sorter view), or a selection of specific slides, for example only the ‘section header’ slides. You can also use the PPT Productivity Tag Slides feature to make this part of the process even easier when working with large presentations.

Once your slides are selected, click the ‘Create Summary Slide’ feature tile on the PPT Productivity top ribbon. And viola! A new PowerPoint Agenda slide will be inserted into your presentation.  As noted above - you can update the slide title to your preference e.g. Agenda, Overview, Contents. The slide titles of each selected slide will appear in a bullet point list. You can add your planned timings for each.

Note - when using the Create Summary Slide to add the agenda, the agenda slide will only appear at the start of your presentation. Agenda's created with the PPT Productivity Agenda Wizard feature will insert slides at the start of each section and automatically update them.