How to Make Columns in Google Slides

Columns are an effective way to organize content and design the layout of your slides in Google Slides. Whether you want a simple two-column text layout or multiple columns with images, this guide provides several methods to add columns to your presentation.

Why Use Columns in Google Slides

Here are some key reasons why columns can enhance your Google Slides:

• Organize information clearly into sections
• Optimize space usage on slides
• Improve visual appeal and consistency
• Allow flexibility in content layout
• Accommodate more text and visuals

Using columns aligns with core presentation design principles around structure, clarity, and visual appeal.

Method 1: Insert a Table

The easiest way to create columns in Google Slides is by inserting a table. Here is a step-by-step guide:

1. Open your Google Slides presentation and select the slide you want to add columns to.
2. Click Insert > Table on the top menu.
3. In the grid that appears, hover over until you see a highlighted rectangle showing the number of columns. Click and drag to select the desired number of columns.
4. Release the mouse button once selected. The columns will appear on your slide.
5. Adjust the column widths by clicking and dragging the borders as needed.
6. Add your content into the table cells such as text, images, shapes, and charts.

The key benefit of using a table is that you can precisely control column widths. You can also easily add up to 20 rows and columns in a single slide.

Method 2: Use a Column Layout

Another way to add columns is by applying a column layout to your slide. Here is how:

1. Open your presentation and select the slide.
2. Click the Layout button on the top menu bar.
3. Select Title and Two Columns or any other column layout from the dropdown menu.
4. Delete the title box if not needed.
5. Customize the column formatting from the toolbar to meet your needs.

The layout method makes it fast and simple to get started with columns. However, it provides less control than inserting a table.

Method 3: Insert Text Boxes

For full customization over column design, you can manually insert and format text boxes:

1. Click Insert > Text Box on the top menu bar.
2. Draw a text box on your slide to define the column width and location.
3. Copy and paste the text box to add more columns.
4. Customize borders, background, alignment, and spacing for each text box.
5. Add your text, images, charts and other visuals into the text boxes.

While this method requires more work upfront, you can fully control width, height, position, and formatting per column.

Tips for Great Looking Columns

Follow these tips to make sure your columns look visually appealing:

• Maintain consistent font styles, sizes and line spacing across all columns.
• Use similar background colors and borders to unify multi-column slides.
• Align columns neatly using layout grids and guidelines.
• Balance column widths to allocated space effectively.
• Add negative space between columns to prevent a cluttered look.

Taking the time to properly design your columns ensures your content shines through clearly and professionally.

Common Column Layouts to Try

Here are some popular column layouts you can create in Google Slides:

• Two Column: A 50-50 split works well for showcasing two sets of comparable data side-by-side.
• Primary + Secondary: Use a wide primary column with narrow secondary column for supporting details.
• Thirds: Having three equal columns can allow you to break information into logical groupings.
• Media + Body: Pair an image gallery column with a text-heavy body content column.

Experiment with these column layouts and more to find what communicates your ideas most effectively.

Conclusion

Adding columns to your Google Slides gives you more ways to organize information and design visually appealing slides. By following the step-by-step instructions in this guide, you can leverage columns to take your presentations to the next level.

Focus on your content structure first before designing the visual layout. And don’t be afraid to try different combinations of columns, rows, text boxes and tables to build slides that engage your audience.