Google Slides is a popular presentation software that allows users to create beautiful and engaging slideshows. By default, Google Slides has a landscape or horizontal orientation. However, there may be instances where you need to change the slide orientation to portrait or vertical for better visibility on mobile devices or to accommodate certain design elements.
Changing the orientation of Google Slides from landscape to portrait is easy to do with just a few simple steps. Here is a complete step-by-step guide.
Why Change Google Slides to Portrait Orientation
Here are some common reasons why you may want to change the slide orientation to portrait:
- To create slides specifically for mobile devices since portrait orientation works better on smartphones and tablets
- To include tall images, diagrams, or charts that need more vertical space to fit well
- To design slides with a more focused, narrow layout that draws attention to key points
- To make slides that match the dimensions of paperwork, reports, or other documents you want to reference
Step 1: Open Your Presentation in Google Slides
First, open the Google Slides presentation you want to edit in your web browser. You can’t change slide orientation using the Google Slides mobile app so make sure you are accessing Google Slides on your laptop or desktop.
If you don’t already have an existing presentation, create a new Google Slides file to follow along.
Step 2: Go to Page Setup
Once your presentation is open, select “File” from the top menu bar and then choose “Page setup” from the drop-down menu. This will open the page setup dialog box.
Step 3: Click on Custom Orientation
In the page setup dialog box, you will see some preset slide sizes and orientations to choose from, including “Standard 4:3” and “Widescreen 16:9”. Click on the “Custom” orientation option to manually change the slide size.
Step 4: Enter New Dimensions
With the custom orientation selected, you can now enter new dimensions to make Google Slides portrait.
To get portrait mode, simply swap the width and height values. For example, enter a height of 1080 pixels and a width of 1920 pixels. This will rotate your slides vertically while keeping the same overall size.
You can tweak the dimensions as needed to best fit your content. Common portrait sizes for Google Slides are 1080×1920 pixels or 7.5×10 inches.
Step 5: Click Apply
Once you’ve entered your desired portrait dimensions, click the “Apply” button to save the changes. All slides in your presentation will now change to the vertical orientation.
Additional Tips
Here are some additional tips when changing Google Slides to portrait:
- You can change the page setup units to inches, centimeters, points or pixels based on what works best for your needs.
- To create a printable vertical slide, select 21.4 cm x 29.7 cm which matches standard A4 size paper dimensions.
- If you need only certain slides to be portrait oriented rather than the entire presentation, you may have to create two separate Google Slides files – one horizontal and one vertical.
- Use widescreen 16:9 slide size for title and agenda slides since landscape orientation works better for text-heavy slides.
How to Change Back to Landscape Orientation
If you want to revert the slides back to the default landscape format, simply follow the same steps above:
- Go to File > Page Setup
- Click on any of the preset horizontal sizes like Widescreen 16:9
- The orientation will change back to landscape
- Click Apply to save the changes
And that’s it! Whether you need to go from landscape to portrait or vice versa, changing the orientation of Google Slides is quick and easy. Follow these steps to create presentations optimized for any display or design needs.
