Detaching Tool panes in PowerPoint 2013


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There are times when you may have to work on the ‘Effects’ pane and ‘Animation’ pane at the same time. When you keep both the panes open, you have very little space left for slide area. This problem is all the more pronounced when you work with smaller monitors.

Different panes in PowerPointDifferent panes in PowerPoint

Is there a way to move the panes around, so that you can use more workspace for slide creation? The answer is – YES. In this article, we will show you how.

#1 Move the panes away from the work space:

When you hover your cursor over the vertical scroll bar of any pane, your cursor turns into a double headed arrow. You can then hold that handle and move the pane in or out to the sides as shown below:

Double Headed Arrow for Moving PanesYou can push your thumbnail view pane totally to the left edge using the above method:

Move Thumbnail PaneThis frees up some useful work space for your slide creation.

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#2 Detach the panes and place them where you need them:

When you click on the small down arrow on the tools pane or animations pane, you will get a drop down menu as follows:

Move Format Picture PaneFormat Picture Pane

Click on the ‘Move’ option and your cursor turns into a four headed arrow when you hover over the title of the pane as shown below:

Arrow to Move PaneYou can hold the handle and move the pane to any location on the slide. In the following example, we have moved the panes to the sides of the slide area.

After moving panesAfter moving panes

#3 Moving the panes back to their position:

The free floating panes can always be placed back to their actual location by moving them closer to the side walls. The panes will snap to the edges neatly. The panes will also get back to their usual positions when you close and open the presentation again.

The above option of free floating panes give a lot of flexibility in terms of the size of work area while creating your slides.

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Related: Work with Complex Graphics with Selection Panes

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