User Interface

Collaborate with others in real time using PowerPoint on the Web

April 30, 2020 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

Did you know that you can collaborate with others on a PowerPoint file in real-time using PowerPoint on the Web? (That’s the same thing as PowerPoint Online.) You can do the same in Microsoft Word and Excel, but I’ll focus on PowerPoint, of course.

Moreover, because you do this with PowerPoint on the Web, your collaborators don’t even need to own PowerPoint. Because you invite others to participate, only people with the link can access the presentation.

To distinguish the situation in which people collaborate but at different times, real-time collaboration is sometimes called co-authoring.

You can work with quite a few people at a time, even up to 30, but I promise you that so many people working on one presentation at a time will get confusing!

Here are the steps for collaborating on a presentation together.

1. Share your presentation

Whether your presentation is on your computer or online, click the Share button at the upper-right corner.

If your presentation is on your computer, PowerPoint prompts you to save it online and lists the online accounts you have.

Note: You can see where you’ve saved a presentation by choosing File>Info. The location is listed beneath the presentation’s name.

You can save it to OneDrive Personal, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint. You can see that I have both business and personal versions of OneDrive.

Note: OneDrive is Microsoft’s online folder system for file storage, whereas SharePoint is meant for larger enterprises and includes collaboration, a Contact Management System, and dashboards. Moreover, there are two versions of OneDrive: OneDrive Personal and OneDrive for Business, so it can get a little confusing. You may have more than one of these — for example, you may use SharePoint or OneDrive for Business at work and OneDrive Personal at home.

At the bottom of the Share dialog box is an option to “Attach a Copy Instead.” You can do this instead of saving the presentation online, but you won’t be able to collaborate in real-time. If you send the presentation, your colleague will be able to edit it. The PDF choice lets you send a PDF of the presentation, which you might do if you only want the other person to view the presentation.

Next, PowerPoint displays the Send Link dialog box, where you can choose to share the online presentation via email or you can get a link.

By default, the link allows your collaborator to edit the presentation, but you can click the arrow to the right of “Anyone with the Link Can Edit” label. This is an important security setting!

The Link Settings dialog box opens where you can:

Uncheck “Allow Editing”
Set an expiration date
Require a password

Click Apply to close that dialog box.

Back in the Send Link dialog box, you then choose how you want to share the presentation — via email or by getting a link that you can provide in any way you want.

Email: If the person is a contact, you can probably type in the person’s name. If not, you can type in an email address. Then click Send.

Link: Click the Copy Link button, which copies the link to the clipboard. You can then paste it wherever you want.

If working online at the same time is important, then set up a time to work together. You can be on the phone with each other while you work, use the Comments feature within PowerPoint, or even work together in Microsoft Teams.

2. Edit online together

Open the presentation and start working on it. You might have to click “Edit in browser” first. You’ll see that prompt at the upper-right.

There’s a simplified ribbon that you can turn on or off. Turn it off to have an experience that’s closest to working offline.

Your presentation will be saved automatically as you work.

If someone else is viewing or working in the presentation, you see that name at the top-right corner of the ribbon. That other person might be shown as “Guest.” You’ll also see an image or icon with the person’s name or “Guest” where the person is editing, such as in a particular textbox

You’ll see a similar indicator on the thumbnail of the slide in the left column because you might be working on one slide while your collaborator is working on a different slide. In this way, you know where your collaborators are in the presentation.

You can watch the changes being made by your collaborator if you’re on the same slide. And your collaborator can see what you do.

3. Close the presentation

Because changes are saved automatically — you can see “Saved to OneDrive” at the top — you can just close the browser tab when you’re done. If you see a message that you might lose your changes, it means that OneDrive or SharePoint is still in the process of saving the file.

Have you collaborated on a presentation in real-time?

I’m curious to know if you have collaborated on a presentation in this way and how it went for you. Please leave a comment and share this with others, because I believe that this feature is both useful and underused.

3 shortcuts for quickly formatting multiple objects

July 19, 2019 by Ellen Finkelstein 1 Comment

I had a client who gave day-long training courses and his presentations were 200-300 slides long. He spent hours changing individual slides–mostly time he could have saved with these 3 shortcuts.

You, too, can save a lot of time using these shortcuts to avoid endless fiddling.

1. Format the slide master

The slide master lets you format the basic settings of your slides all in one place, so you don’t have to fuss with individual slides as much. Using the slide master wisely saves LOTS of time. It also makes your slides more consistent.

To get to the slide master, click the View tab and then choose Slide Master. Each theme in PowerPoint has its own Slide Master.

When you open the Slide Master, you’ll see a left column with a Master at the top (it’s a little larger) and all of the layouts that come with that theme. The Master controls the rest of the layouts and so that’s where you should start.

You should customize the font, font color, font placement, font size and any graphics you want to put there.

For more information on how to customize the theme in the Slide Master view, see these two older blog posts:

10 steps to create a better PowerPoint theme

Customize the default theme to instantly get the look you want

2. Use the Format Painter

Even if you customize the Slide Master, you’ll want to add text, graphics, etc. on individual slides and a common task is to format one object to match another. The Format Painter makes this easy to do.

By the way, the Format Painter is available in Microsoft Word and Excel as well.

To use the Format Painter, select the object that has the formatting you want, such as fill color or outline color, and click the Format Painter button on the Home tab. Then click the object that you want to match the first object.

The Format Painter becomes really powerful when you double-click the Format Painter. Then, you can select as many objects you want to make them match the first object. This makes quick work of your formatting.

When you’re done, click the Format Painter button one time to turn off that process.

3. Repeat actions with the F4 key

The third shortcut is to use the F4 key to repeat your last action. For example, if you change the color of one shape to purple, you can then select another shape and press F4 to change that to purple, too. Or if you change the size of some text to 36 points, you can select some other text and press F4 to change that text to 36 points, too.

You can save a lot of time clicking objects and pressing F4 instead of repeating the action from scratch by clicking a button on a ribbon, typing in a value, etc.

Check out “10 Hacks for Better Slides in Under 5 Minutes“

I have some free training with even more shortcuts. You can register for it here.

It’s about 1 hour long. One person said, “Your webinar was the BEST that I have attended!!!! I can use EVERY hack that you taught us.”

Transcribe or translate your live talk in PowerPoint with a Star Trek twist

February 26, 2019 by Ellen Finkelstein 15 Comments

If you have Office 365 (the subscription version that is always updated), there’s a new feature coming out that is truly extraordinary! If you’re in the Office Insider program, you may have it already. Otherwise, you’ll get it when it’s rolled out to everyone with Office 365.

As you talk, PowerPoint will display what you are saying on your slides — or translate it into any of more than 60 languages. 60!

Right now, it understands 6 spoken languages: [Read more…]

2 ways to save time and effort by setting default shape formats in PowerPoint

February 4, 2018 by Ellen Finkelstein 10 Comments

I rarely use shapes with outlines. So every time I insert a shape, I click the Format tab, choose Shape Outline, then No Outline.

Wait, why am I doing that? I can customize my themes!

I often use the default theme to create graphics. Here are the steps to customize it to always get a theme with shapes that have no outlines. Of course, you can make any changes you want.

Remember that themes don’t have any objects in them, unlike templates, which can have sample slides, logos, images, etc.

Know which theme you’re using

First, I want to show you a little trick that will tell you which theme you’re using. This will help you know which theme is your default. PowerPoint used to show you the current theme on the status bar at the lower-left of the PowerPoint window, but for some reason stopped doing that.

But you can get it back!

Right-click the status bar in PowerPoint to see the Customize Status Bar list. Click Theme to always see which theme you’re using. (You’ll see the current theme listed on the right.)

Now, look at your status bar. It shows your current theme!

This is probably the theme that you want to change.

Why not change the Slide Master?

Remember that many defaults are set in the Slide Master, such as the font, text alignment, etc. So if that’s what you want to change, you would use a slightly different procedure. In that case, see my post, “Customize the Default Theme to Instantly Get the Look You Want.”

And you shouldn’t use this method to change the default shape color, because you should set your colors on the Slide Master. “Try Design Variations” explains how to set your theme colors.

In fact, the reason you can’t use the Slide Master to get rid of the shape outline is that while you can customize your fonts and colors, you don’t have the same flexibility with shape effects. You can choose from a set group of effects, but it’s hard to know from the thumbnail images exactly what you’re getting and you can’t customize them. And as far as I can tell, none of the options offers shapes with no outline

1. Define and set the default shape

Now, define your shape and make it the default. Follow these steps:

Insert a shape.
Make the changes you want. I clicked Shape Outline and chose No Outline.
Right-click the shape and choose Set as Default Shape.

Setting a default shape works only for your current presentation. And if you want default shapes only for one presentation, this is the method to use.

2. Set the theme as your default theme

If you want your formatting to be permanent, you have to take one more step, that is, to set the theme as your default. You can do this for your customized theme as well.

Follow these steps:

Click the Design tab.
Click the More down arrow at the right end of the Themes gallery/group to expand the display of the available themes.
Find your current theme. (Because you have displayed it on your status bar, you know what it is.)
Right-click it and choose Set as Default Theme.

The shape itself won’t be saved with the theme. Remember, themes don’t contain objects/text/ images, etc.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You must be using a custom theme for this to work.

To test that this worked, do the following:

Close and re-open PowerPoint.
Choose the Default Theme if you see the Startup screen.
Insert a shape. It should be formatted the way you want it.

No outline–yay!

To make a similar change for other themes that you don’t want to be your default theme, just do the following:

On the Design tab, choose the theme. Note its name.
Insert a shape and format it.
Right-click it and set it as the default shape as described above.
Click the More arrow and choose Save Current Theme.
Choose the current theme from the list and click Save.
When prompted to replace it, click Yes.

Are you spending time doing the same formatting of shapes over and over? Leave a comment and please share this post with others using the Social Media buttons.

If you like tips like this, you’ll love my e-book, 101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know! Check it out here.

3 techniques to copy formatting in PowerPoint

August 19, 2017 by Ellen Finkelstein 3 Comments

You can spend a lot of time formatting a shape or some text in PowerPoint and you certainly don’t want to have to repeat that process if it isn’t necessary. The good news is that PowerPoint has several techniques to copy formatting and animation. If you aren’t using them, you’ll soon wonder how you got along without them.

1) Format Painter and Pick Up/Apply Style

This is actually 2 techniques but I’m putting them together because they’re similar.

Format Painter is probably the best known.

Here are the steps:

Format an object the way you like; it could be a shape, some text, or an image.
Insert another object.
Select the first object and click Format Painter on the Home tab in the Clipboard group.
Click the second object to copy the formatting.

Tip: Double-click the Format Painter button to keep it “on” and apply the formatting to multiple objects, one after another. When you’re done, click Format Painter once to turn it back “off.”

Pick Up Style and Apply Style are less well-known because they are not on the ribbon. They’re similar to Format Painter but have 2 advantages:

The style that you pick up remains available to you even after you do other tasks. It also may be easier when you need to apply a style on a different slide.
Apply Style is often easier to use for text; in my experience, it’s sometimes hard to select text when the Format Painter is active.

I recommend that you put these commands on the Quick Access Toolbar. I explain how in “Work Faster in PowerPoint.” (You’ll find some other cool tricks there, too.) But you can also use the (faster) keyboard shortcuts which are:

Ctrl+Shift+C: Pick Up Style
Ctrl+Shift+V: Apply Style

Think of these as variations of the well-known Copy and Paste shortcuts but by adding the Shift key, you’re copying the formatting instead of the object itself.

2) Change Picture and Change Shape

Again, I’m combining 2 techniques because they are similar–and both very useful.

You can use the Format Painter or Pick Up and Apply Style on a picture or shape, but let’s say you want to change the image or shape without losing the formatting. This saves you from inserting a new picture and having to copy the formatting.

Here are the steps to change a picture without losing the formatting:

Right-click the image and choose Change Picture.
Then choose the source of your picture. I usually use From a File but notice the other options. You can even choose from a picture that you copied to the clipboard.
Find the specific picture (if not from the clipboard) and select it.

PowerPoint changes the picture but keeps the formatting.

You can use a similar technique to change a shape without losing the formatting. Here are the steps:

Select the shape.
Click the Format tab and choose Edit Shape, Change Shape in the Insert Shapes group.
Choose the shape you want from the Shapes Gallery.

PowerPoint changes the shape but keeps the formatting.

3) Animation Painter

You can also copy animation easily since PowerPoint 2010. It works like the Format Painter.

Select an object that you have animated.
On the Animations tab, click Animation Painter.
Click another object to apply the same animation to it.

Like the Format Painter, you can double-click the Animation Painter to apply animation to multiple objects and then click it once to turn it off.

There are some other techniques to reduce formatting time and save chart formatting, but I’ll save those for another post.

Do you have some shortcuts that you use to save time formatting? Leave a comment and please use the Social Media share buttons below to share this post!