Picking the Best Slide Layout
Although it's easy to add a new slide to a presentation, choosing the right slide layout isn't always so simple.
PowerPoint supports two broad categories of slides: title slides (typically the first slide in a presentation), and "regular" slides (which, confusingly, are usually just called "slides"). PowerPoint has one predefined layout for title slides, and almost two dozen predefined layouts for regular slides.
Slide layouts aren't static: You can change a slide's layout by selecting the slide, choosing Format, Slide Layout, and applying a layout (by clicking it) from the Slide Layout pane
Choosing a Slide Layout
Whether you're applying a layout to a brand-new slide, or changing the layout of an existing slide, PowerPoint presents you with the Slide Layout choices shown in Figure 29.1.
Figure 29.1. The Slide Layout pane gives you more than two dozen different ways to organize a slide.
If you choose the first thumbnail in the Slide Layout pane, PowerPoint turns the new slide (or selected slide) into a title slide. Title slides are treated differently from other slides in a presentation—they're formatted independently of the rest of the slides, using the Title Master. They generally don't have bullet points and they generally do have a subtitle, so make sure you really want a title slide before making this choice.
→ For more information on editing title slides, see "Using the Title Master".
Note
The distinction between a title slide and a "regular" slide comes into play because of the way master formatting changes ripple through a presentation. The only way you can manually turn a "regular" slide into a title slide is by applying this first layout, the one called "Title Slide" in the Slide Layout pane.
Other slide thumbnails in the Slide Layout dialog box (refer to Figure 29.1) contain one or more of the following:
Text placeholders —Typically for bulleted and numbered lists.
A general "content" placeholder — Ties into PowerPoint's Insert Object function. The standard content on offer here includes a simple grid (that is, a table), a Microsoft Chart chart, clip art from the gallery, a picture (from a file), a diagram/org chart, or a media clip.
→ For instructions on using the chart drawing tool, see "Creating and Editing Charts and Diagrams".
→ To use Office's Org Chart drawing system, see "Organization Charts".
Tip from 
Placeholders can be resized or dragged to fit your requirements. You need not settle for the size or placement established in the Slide Layout dialog pane.
The general "content" placeholder is a superset of the individual clip art, chart, media clip, and org chart placeholders. In general, you do not limit your choices by using the Slide Layout pane's Content Layouts, as opposed to the Other Layouts.
Using Placeholders
With few exceptions, every slide layout has a title placeholder, which reserves space for the title of the slide; this text also appears at the highest hierarchical level in the presentation's outline.
Most slides also have at least one text placeholder. The contents of the text placeholder appear in the outline as points underneath the highest hierarchical level.
Slides that have two text placeholders generate separate outline sections for each placeholder. As you can see in Figure 29.2, PowerPoint gives each placeholder a number, which is used in the outline to keep track of what text belongs in which placeholder.
Figure 29.2. Multiple text placeholders receive separate numbers, as indicated in the outline pane.
All the other kinds of slide layout placeholders are special kinds of graphic placeholders: table, chart, org (organizational) chart, clip art, media clip, and general "content" placeholders all contain graphics that don't appear in the outline. The only real difference among all these graphic placeholders, in fact, is the kind of link they provide to retrieve the graphic.
Note
You cannot manually insert a placeholder on a slide. Instead, you have to use the Slide Layout pane shown previously in Figure 29.1. In particular, you cannot add a third text placeholder to a slide.
Going Outside the Placeholders
Not all slide activity takes place within placeholders. In fact, any of the items that can go in one of the many graphic placeholders can also be placed directly on the slide—no placeholder required.
There are two benefits to using the graphic placeholders: First, as the name implies, they hold a place open on the slide so PowerPoint can scale the inserted graphic properly and move other placeholders out of the way as needed. Second, they provide easy links to specific kinds of graphics. If neither of these characteristics matters on a given slide, consider bypassing graphic placeholders entirely.
Graphics and drawings (for example, items generated by the Drawing toolbar, or any graphic from the Insert menu) that are placed directly on a slide go in the drawing layer.
→ To learn more about how the drawing layer stores graphics and drawings for your presentation, see "Working with the Drawing Layer".
Note, in particular, that text entered in the drawing layer (say, inside a callout or a text box generated by the Drawing toolbar or by choosing Insert, Text Box) does not appear in the outline.