PowerPoint XP, Microsoft’s presentation graphics application, has several versatile views that make creating slides easier.

PowerPoint XP’s tri-pane view opens when you launch PowerPoint. This new default normal view allows you to see multiple parts of a presentation at once. This view contains the Outline tabbed pane on the left, the Slide pane in the center, and the task pane on the right.

Outline view shows the text of your presentation for easy editing. Slides view shows text and graphics of the slide you're working on. You can click the tabs to switch between these two views.

The task pane is one of the other noticeable changes between PowerPoint 2000 and PowerPoint 2002 . This pane allows you to select tasks in different categories, allowing you to quickly enhance your slides in a few steps.

The center slide area is the main work area for your slides. Under this area is a place for notes.

You can quickly hide or show the different panes in Normal view. To hide the task pane , click the View menu and choose Task Pane .

To learn more about PowerPoint XP views, visit our PowerPoint XP tutorial.