Time saving tips for MS PowerPoint 2010

PowerPoint is an awesome tool to create effective presentations. You may have known how to create a presentation but do you know how to create it fast. In today’s life nobody has time to spend 2, 3 hours on creating a presentation but since you have to meet deadlines and targets in your company, you have no option but to create it. No worries now! We are here to make your life easier. Here are top 10 time saving tips to create presentation fast.


Use slide master to make universal changes in all slides: Using slide master you can make changes in all your slide simultaneously. It saves time because you don't have to change every slide manually. A slide master contains the information of presentation themes, layouts, background color, size etc. This feature is useful when you have a very long presentation. Follow below steps to access slide master:

1. Open your presentation.
2. Go to View tab-> Master View group-> Slide Master.

Add frequently used button in Quick Access toolbar: There are certain task that you needs to do repeatedly in every slide. To save time you can add frequently used buttons or tasks in Quick Access toolbar so that you don't have to search that button again and again. Follow below steps to add a button on Quick Access toolbar:

1. On the ribbon, click on desired tab where you want to display the button that you will add in Quick Access toolbar.
2. Now right click on the button that you want to add and click 'Add to Quick Access Toolbar'.

Use Format Painter to format objects: Format Painter tool comes in handy when you want to apply the same formatting of one particular object on other objects also. For example, you like some effect for your text string, like italic font, red color and 10 size. Now you want to apply this same formatting on other text also. So instead of performing these three actions again manually on every text string, you can use the Format Painter to apply all three changes at one time. Here is how to use the Format Painter:

1. Select the text of which you want to apply formatting.
2. On the ribbon, click Format Painter.
3. Now click the text on which you want to apply formatting.

Copy one Presentation theme to another: You can easily copy the design theme of one presentation in to another. Suppose you want to use the same theme that you had used in your previous presentation so instead of recreating it by scratch for your new presentation, you can copy it. Follow below steps to do that:

1. Open both presentations.
2. Go to View-> Arrange All button.
3. Now go to the presentation from where you want to copy the theme.
4. Click on the thumbnail of the slide and select Format Painter.
5. Go to the presentation where you want to apply the theme.
6. Now click on the thumbnail of the slide.
7. It will copy the theme.

There is one more benefit of using this feature. You can easily compare two presentations by viewing them in the same window.

Quickly find and replace text: This tool comes in handy when you want to change some text quickly in all your slides. Suppose you want to change the name of slide presenter with your name. For this you can use Find & Replace command. Followings are the steps to do that:

1. Press Ctrl + F to open Find dialog box.
2. In the text box, type the text that you want to search.
3. Now press Ctrl + H to open replace dialog box.
4. Type the text with which you want to replace the previous text.

Add images quickly: If you are creating a presentation with only images then you can use photo album feature to make the process fast. Follow below quick steps to do that:

1. Open your presentation.
2. Go to Insert-> Image Group-> New photo album.
3. Now you can add any number of images that you want.

Animation Painter: Animation printer is a new feature of PowerPoint 2010. It allows you to copy the animation effect of one object to another object. It works similar to Format Printer. You can save your time by using this tool because now you can copy entire animation effect in just one click. Here are the steps to use Animation Painter:

1. Select the slide of which you want to copy the animation.
2. Go to ribbon and click Animation tab.
3. Go to Advanced Animation section-> Animation Painter.
4. Now click on the slide where you want to apply the animation effect.
5. Animation effect has now been applied.

Insert videos online: With PowerPoint 2010 you can directly play and insert video from online sites like YouTube and Revver. You just need to copy the embedded code of video and paste it in to insert video dialog box.

Keyboard shortcuts: To save time you can use shortcut keys. There are shortcuts for formatting, editing and for other tasks. Here are some useful shortcuts:
Ctrl + B → To bold text
Ctrl + U → To underline text
Ctrl + J → To justify text
Ctrl+ Z → To undo text
Ctrl+ X → To cut the text
Ctrl + Y → o repeat or redo
Ctrl+ N → To open a new tab
F5         → To run a slideshow
Ctrl + C → To copy
Ctrl + V → To paste

See quick preview: Preview feature saves a lot of time because you can quickly check how the change will look like by holding the mouse over the object. But this option is not active for all features means you can see the live preview only for some of the options like fonts, themes, styles etc. Here is how it works:

1. Open tour presentation.
2. Insert any shape on the slide.
3. Select the shape and click on arrow next to shape styles.
4. Click on any shape style.
5. Now you can see the live preview of the shape style that you have apply on the shape.
6. Likewise click on any shape style to see the preview.

I hope this tips will help you in creating your presentation faster than ever. If you are also aware of any time saving tip then please do share through comments. I would love to hear.