Information Technology
03 October 2024
Essential Microsoft PowerPoint Features
We've pulled together some essential Microsoft PowerPoint features you can use to help you become more efficient.
Reusing slides
One of the most common things we hear people having to do in PowerPoint is to reuse slides that already exist in other presentations, but that this often brings with it its own set of headaches around formatting not behaving.
Using PowerPoint's 'Reuse Slides' command may make the process easier:
- Click Home > Reuse Slides, or Insert > Reuse Slides
- Either select a recent file and click Choose content, or Browse to the required presentation
- Click the Insert Slide option below any slides you need
Any slide can now be clicked to insert it into the current presentation, with all its formatting updated to match the new file! If you need to retain the original formatting, tick the Use source formatting option (at the top of the panel) before inserting the slide(s).
Working with slide text
| Move current bullet point up/down | Alt+Shift+up/down arrow |
| Navigate to next placeholder on slide | Ctrl+Return |
| Add new slide (if in last placeholder) | Ctrl+Return |
| Add new slide | Ctrl+M |
Working with objects
| Select multiple objects | Click first; Shift+click next |
| Move selected object(s) | Up/down/left/right arrow keys |
| Resize and keep aspect ratio (‘constrain’) | Hold Shift whilst resizing |
| Resize from centre outwards | Hold Alt whilst resizing |
| Duplicate selected object(s) | Ctrl+D |
| Group selected objects | Ctrl+G |
| Ungroup selected object | Ctrl+Shift+G |
Controlling a slide show
| Start slide show from beginning | F5 |
| Start slide show from current slide | Shift+F5 |
| Navigate to a slide whilst presenting | Type slide number, and press Return |
| Pause/unpause slide timings | S |
| Black screen on/off | B |
| White screen on/off | W |
| Show next hidden slide | H |