Your favorite PowerPoint Tips from Tom Kuhlmann's Blog

Tom has done it again! He always has the best tips. My favorite is #2 because while I already knew about the selection pane, I never realized that you could re-name the objects. That can really make life easier, especially on slides where you have a ton of different objects.

Selection pane is the one I use the most. But what about the unmentioned quick access bar in the top of your powerpoint screen. You can add anything you use often by right clicking it in the ribbon and adding it to the quick access pane. As you can see I've added the Selection pane, Alignment tool and the Paste as PNG feature which I use a lot.

Totally agree Jeff! The quick access bar is an amazing time-saver! Mine actually looks much like yours: 

Love the QAT and am shocked that so few people actually use it...here is a picture of mine and a bit of my own personal "strategy" behind it…SUPER geeky, I know :)

Nuke the first three commands as they are simple CTRL + S, CTRL + Z and CTRL + Y shortcuts and thus eating up valuable space (this applies to other Office programs too).

The first nine positions should be reserved for keyboard shortcuts that have more than five key strokes into the Ribbon as they make easy ATL +1 to 9 shortcuts...anything after that is where you should park your mouse shortcuts...i.e. things in the Ribbon like the shapes gallery that you need to select and draw with your mouse anyway on your slide…i.e. there is no benefit to hitting it with the Alt key.

Also, don't forget the "not in your Ribbon" commands that you can add by customizing the QAT through the ‘more commands’ dialog.

Wow Taylor! When it comes to the QAT, you don't mess around! Thanks for the tips. :)

Shame about the comic sans ;-)