Creating PowerPoint slides can be a very time consuming process. When I first started working in consulting, some slides would take me several hours to create. Hundreds of slides later, I can produce the same quality and complexity of slides in a matter of minutes.
How do we become much more productive? Partly, it’s just from knowing your shortcuts. In this article, I’ve compiled a short list of “not-so-obvious” PowerPoint shortcuts. These are also very useful shortcuts–ones that I find myself using the most often.
Font Shortcuts
| Ctrl + [ Ctrl + ] |
Decrease font size Increase font size |
| Ctrl + Shift + G | Jump to the “Font Face” dropdown menu |
| Ctrl + Shift + H | Jump to the “Font Size” dropdown menu |
| Shift + F3 | Toggle among various capitalization formats: all lower case, capitalize first letters of words, all upper case |
| Ctrl + Alt + right arrow [->] Ctrl + Alt + left arrow [<-] |
Increase indent of a bullet by one level Decrease indent of a bullet by one level |
AutoShape/Object Shortcuts
| Ctrl + arrow key | Moves objects pixel by pixel (invaluable for positioning objects to the exact pixel you need) |
| Shift + while changing size of an object | Maintains ratio of dimensions (e.g. if your AutoShape is a square, holding down the “Shift” key while resizing will keep the shape as a square–and not a rectangle) |
| PowerPoint 2003 Ctrl + Shift + G Ctrl + Shift + H |
PowerPoint 2003 Group objects together Ungroup objects |
| PowerPoint 2007+ Ctrl + G Ctrl + Shift + G |
PowerPoint 2007+ Group objects together Ungroup objects |
| Ctrl + click and move object with cursor | Creates duplicate copy of the object |
Use a shortcut that’s missing from our list? Please share in the comments section below.
If you use PowerPoint a lot, take a look at our free PowerPoint plugin, Flevy Tools. Flevy Tools allows you to quickly create common business diagrams, such as Harvey/Booz Ball diagrams, Gantt charts, and Step Box charts. It’s been compared to similar plugins developed in-house at top-tier consulting firms and said to be better.
Of course, another huge driver to increased productivity is just having a large collection of slides that can be re-positioned and reused.
You can find tons of of customizable PowerPoint templates, diagrams, and slides here on Flevy. Here are some specific PowerPoint templates and collections to get you started:
