This article will guide you through modifying your table of contents settings. If you're not familiar with UpSlide's PowerPoint automation, you might want to look at your Getting started article.

The subsection divider helps further structure the presentation. In the introduction, we mentioned the differences between Light and Standard templates. The Lifht template only allows you to display information about the current subsection. The Standard template allows you to display information about the parent section and the rest of the subsections available in the parent section. 

In this article, we will build the following subsection divider as examples.

If you do not intend to use subsection dividers in your presentation, in the UpSlide ribbon, go to the References section and click Options, then Subsection Divider. Under Start subsections with a divider, select No. You can skip the rest of this article.

Presentation layout

Go to the Slide Master to ensure you have a layout to use as a subsection divider. In this layout, you don't need to have any title or footer placeholders. The only shapes you need are the ones you will use for decoration.

If you plan to use the same layout style for your section and subsection divider, you can skip this step and reuse the same one. In our example, we're using different layouts for section dividers and subsection dividers. However, we will use the same for the Light or the Standard template.

Options

In the UpSlide ribbon, go to the References section and click Options, then Subsection Divider. Here, you will set up all the automation parameters related to subsection dividers.

Layout

You can select whether or not you would like subsections to have dividers. If you select No, users can still add subsections to their presentations, but there won't be specific slides to identify them by, which can make sense for shorter presentations. 

Select Yes, but can be deactivated to let the user decide if they would like to have subsection dividers or not. If this option is selected, the toggle button will appear in the Agenda's Display Options.

If you choose to have subsection dividers in your presentation, click the Layout box to select the layout that should be used for each subsection divider. You can use the same one you picked for the section divider or pick one that you created on purpose.

Content

The options available in Content will differ based on whether you have selected a Light or a Standard template at the start.

Light template

With a Light template, your subsection dividers can only contain 3 shapes. They will be set by default:

• Shape 1 with <%SubSectionNum%> to display the subsection number.
• Shape 2 with <%SubsectionName%> to display the subsection title.
• Shape 3 is disabled by default. You can choose to put the current section number as a reminder by using the variable <%SectionNum%>.

If you'd like to know all the variables you can use in this section, you can find the summary table in the reminder article.

Standard template

A Standard template gives you additional options. You can display in the section divider

• The parent section and all other sections of your presentation, whether they are unnumbered or appendix sections.
• All other subsections
• The current subsection's slide titles. The user can also toggle them with the option Yes, but can be deactivated.

Advanced Options

In our Standard template, we display non-current subsections with a different colour. You can set the font colour for other subsections in the Advanced Options tab. Tick Use specific font color and enter the Red, Green and Blue values in the fields. If you're not sure about the colour codes, you can find the values in PowerPoint's native colour picker.

This customisation is unavailable for Light templates because you can only display the current subsection title.

Automation layout

Once you've selected all the options for your subsection divider, you can go through the automation slide to place the different elements you've chosen to display. 

In the Slide Master, select the third slide in the section section. It should be the SubSection Divider Storage Layout. Delete the grey box to display the automation elements. As for the Agenda, it is recommended to open the Selection Pane in the Home tab to have a better view of all the elements.

Light template

Below is the list of all the placeholders in the Subsection Divider Storage Layout you will see if you use the Light template:

• Section Index Box: contains the information for Shape 1. If you haven't changed its value, it will be the number or letter used to identify the subsection.
• Section Title Box: contains the information for Shape 2. If you haven't changed its value, it will be the subsection's title.
• Section Page Box: contains the information for Shape 3. If you've selected to put another value here, it will be displayed there.

To customize this layout, move the shapes to the desired space and update their font. If you're not using Shape 3, you can push the placeholder Section Page Box to the side.

Standard template

Below is the list of all the placeholders in the Subsection Divider Storage Layout if you use the Standard template:

• Section Index Box: contains the number or letter used to identify the parent section of the current subsection.
• Section Title Box: contains the parent section’s title.
• Section Page Box: contains the parent section’s divider slide number.
• Subsection Index Box: contains the number or letter used to identify the subsection.
• Subsection Title Box: contains the subsection’s title.
• Subsection Page Box: contains the subsection’s divider slide number.
• Slide Title Box: contains the slide’s title if you’ve selected to display slide titles in the Options.
• Slide Page Box: contains the slide’s number if you’ve selected to display slide titles in the Options.
• Plot Area: defines the space in which the titles will be inserted. If there are too many titles to fit in the placeholder, the subsection divider will switch to only displaying the current subsection.

Customise the Standard template automation layout

To customize the layout, move the Plot Area to define where the titles should be displayed. Don't make the shape too small, or your titles won't fit.

Then, place the Section Index Box and the Section Title Box so the placeholders fit inside the Plot Area. You can then update the font colour and size to fit your template. We used the same technique as shown in the Section article to display the section number outside of the Plot Area

Then, move the Subsection Index Box, the Subsection Title Box and the Subsection Page Box so the placeholders fit inside the Plot Area and customise the font size, colour and weight. We recommend all placeholders be the same height to avoid misalignment.

This is what our Standard template automation slide looks like after placing all the placeholders