PowerPoint is an excellent program for combining text, images, shapes, and multimedia. However, there are occasions when you may only want to evaluate the content of the slide deck and ignore the non-text elements. This is when PowerPoint's Outline view comes in handy. In the Normal view, the Outline view is accessible via the tab next to the Slide tab.
Only the text material from various slides is visible in the outline view. The text entered in the non-text field, such as SmartArt, WordArt, or any other shape, is not visible in this mode.
The outline pane is small by default since it is the same size as the slide tab pane. You can, however, drag the pane out to make it larger in order to facilitate readability.