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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.”

Video tutorial: Create a theme in PowerPoint from scratch

June 22, 2015 by Ellen Finkelstein 2 Comments

In my clients’ presentations that we make over (usually together), I see a lot of themes and slide masters that aren’t well prepared — sometimes not prepared at all. Setting up the theme and slide master, while it might seem time consuming, is actually a time saver because you avoid having to fiddle with each slide. And your slides will look better as well.

Here’s a video of a session from Power Pointers Quarter Hour that shows the process of how to create a theme in PowerPoint — similar to one that I often use. By watching it, you’ll learn the process and can then customize it for your own needs.

Setting up a customized theme is a time saver allowing you more freedom during presentations. #backgrounds #themes #powerpoint Share on X

PowerPoint crashed during the session, but I was able to successfully complete the tutorial.

Apply a slide master to a presentation

May 18, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 28 Comments

I recently received this question.

“I have a power point presentation (created in 2007 and recently moved into 2010) that I want to change the master slide with a new one my designer gave me. It was given to me as a regular slide and I want to make it a master slide so all the slides will change using this new background.”

What do you receive from a designer?

The basic question is how to apply a slide master to an existing presentation.

When you receive a “regular slide” from a designer, you need to figure out where the design is.

If the design is actually on the slide itself, you need to make some changes — and your designer doesn’t know very much about PowerPoint. That’s because in order for you to easily apply the design to other presentations, the design should be on the slide master.

It’s easy to check. Follow these steps:

Choose View tab, Slide Master.
In the left-hand pane, scroll up to the first, larger thumbnail.

If the design is on the Slide Master, you’re in good shape. If not, you need to find some way to transfer the design from the slide itself to the slide master. Often all you need to do is to select all of the objects on the slide, cut to the Clipboard, and paste on the first, larger thumbnail (the “Master”) in Slide Master view. Then save the presentation.

The wrong way

You should keep the presentation you received unchanged, so save a copy to use as a basis. Then open both the designed copy and your original presentation — the one that you want to apply the design to.

In the original presentation, select all of the slides. You can click the first slide, press and hold the Shift key, and click the last slide. You can do this in the left-hand pane or in Slide Sorter view. Then copy them to the Clipboard.

Display the designed copy, click in the left-hand pane, and paste. By default, the slides will take on the destination design.

A better way

Ideally, you should create a theme file. This makes applying your design easy and you don’t have to worry about copying over your original presentation. Here are the steps:

In Normal view, click the Design tab.
At the right end of the Themes gallery, click the More button, as you see here.
At the bottom of the themes gallery, click Save Current Theme.
You’ll be in the default Themes folder. Don’t change the folder! Type a descriptive name for your theme and click Save.

To use your theme to an existing presentation, this is all you have to do:

Click the Design tab.
If you don’t see your theme, click the same More button at the right end of the Themes gallery and choose your theme from the Custom section, as you see here for a light-blue gradient theme that I created.

Do you have any questions about applying a design to a presentation? Leave a comment!

“101 Tips Every PowerPoint User Should Know” is for everyone who never took a course or read a book about PowerPoint! These tips will fill in the gaps, speed up your work, make presentations easier, and help you get better results. Now updated through PowerPoint 2016 and Office 365. Learn more at http://ellenfinkelstein.com/pptblog/101-tips/

Customize the default theme to instantly get the look you want

September 21, 2013 by Ellen Finkelstein 4 Comments

Do you open a new presentation and constantly change the font, font size, font color, alignment and more? Does your organization have difficulty getting everyone to use the right theme, so that presentations are not consistent? One of my readers asked this question because the organization wants presentations to use the Arial font, but the default always comes up using Calibri.

If you’re in this situation, then customizing the default theme in PowerPoint 2007, 2010 or 2013 will solve your problems! When you first open PowerPoint, you’ll get exactly the look you want.

Follow these steps:

Open PowerPoint. In 2007 and 2010, you’ll see the default, blank theme. In 2013, choose the option marked Default Theme.
To go to the slide master, click the View tab, then click Slide Master.
Click the top, larger master thumbnail in the left-hand column. You may need to scroll up to see it. Make the changes that you want. For example, select the slide title and change its font, font size, font color and alignment.
From the Slide Master tab, click the Close Master View button or just click the Normal view icon at the lower-left corner of the screen.
Click the Design tab. In the Themes group, click the More button on the right and choose Save Current Theme at the bottom.
In the Save Current Theme dialog box, accept the default location, type a new name for the theme, and click Save.
Again click the Themes gallery More button and look in the Themes gallery’s Custom section. Find your new theme. To distinguish it from others that look similar, hover your cursor over a theme to see its name in a tooltip. Right-click the new theme and choose Set as Default Theme.

To test the theme, close PowerPoint without saving changes and re-open it. In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, you’ll automatically see your new default theme. In PowerPoint 2013, you’ll see your new custom theme in the top-left position labeled Default Theme.

See Geetesh Bajaj’s article on setting the slide size to standard 4:3 size as the default in PowerPoint 2013 here. He uses a similar procedure.

Have you customized your default theme or created a custom theme? Leave a comment!

8 steps to add branding to your presentations

November 11, 2012 by Ellen Finkelstein 5 Comments

When I do corporate training or public webinars, I usually ask attendees to submit a couple of slides. After covering basic principles of how to transform presentations (and the reasons behind those principles), I show makeovers of the submitted slides. The makeovers help people see how to use the principles on their own slides.

One of the principles that I don’t usually cover at first, but which comes up all the time in makeovers, is branding. A website is branded. A printed brochure is branded. But all too often, presentations use any old colors — whether the default or anything else. Part of the reason is that websites and brochures are designed by professional designers and presentations are often created by presenters who are anything but that.

Large companies do sometimes have professionally designed templates that match their branding but even then, in my experience, presenters often misuse or don’t use those templates, with sloppy results.

Why brand your presentation?

Branding is a big concept and is a way to encapsulate your company’s identity. One aspect of branding is the visual component, which can include:

A logo
A tagline
Colors
Fonts
Illustration and photography style
Graphic theme

A presentation that outsiders see represents your organization, so it should use your branding. Even for internal presentations, branding can create a sense of shared purpose among the audience members. Sales presentations often include some aspects of the potential customer’s branding, as well — usually just the logo and colors.

Just as a country’s flag is a way to rally citizen’s around the interests of a country, the visual aspects of branding help to rally employees around the interests of an organization.

How to add branding to a presentation

It isn’t hard to add branding to your presentations and save the results as a theme that you can use over and over. Here are the steps to take to add branding to a presentation in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010: [Read more…]