Get the best shortcuts

in PowerPoint

Shortcuts allow you to keep your fingers on the keyboard and create PowerPoint presentations faster. For users with mobility or vision disabilities, keyboard shortcuts can be easier than using the touchscreen and are an essential alternative to using a mouse.

Maybe you find that using an external keyboard with keyboard shortcuts helps you work more efficiently?

Maybe you haven’t discovered the pros yet?

Let us be the first to tell you that this article will create a radical change in your life. At least it will be an optimization of the time you spend making your presentations in PowerPoint.

We have asked SkabelonDesign’s Head of Design & Content Frederik Dessau, also known as our PowerPoint wizard, master of tricks and shortcut ninja, to reveal his most used keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint.

1. Repeat: F4

If you do anything on a slide that you want to do again, you click F4. Let’s say that you colour a figure red, and you want to colour four more figures red as well, you press one figure at a time and click F4. When you have clicked all five figures, they will all be red. And you have saved yourself a lot of time.

2. Save as: F12

Every time you click F12, you save three clicks. After naming your presentation, you have Ctrl+S to save your document as normal again and again.

3. Present: Shift+F5

When you know this shortcut, you will use it all the time. Clicking Shift+F5 lets you present from the very slide that you are on. That’s just super easy and super smart.

4. Zoom to object: Ctrl+Mouse+Scroll

Click an object, hold Ctrl, scroll your mouse and your view will now be zoomed close to that object. This shortcut is very handy and gives you the opportunity to easily work on the details in parts of your slide.

5. Group: Ctrl+G

Super convenient shortcut with the function of grouping single elements. Super useful, especially when you want to create the build of a document. Let’s say that you have a slide in your presentation with many objects. No audience will be able to concentrate, if you don’t create some kind of animation to the objects to control the focus of the audience. Using Ctrl+G you gather the group of elements that are connected and should stay together. This makes it super easy and fast to make slide animations, so that your audience isn’t distracted. To ungroup, click Ctrl+Shift+G.

6. New slide: Ctrl+M

Clicking Ctrl+M will add a new slide with the same layout as the current slide.

7. Duplicate slide: Ctrl+D

Clicking Ctrl+M will not just add a new slide with the same layout. The duplicated slide will have the same layout, content and design as the current slide.

8. Duplicate object: Ctrl+drag and then drop

Hold the object you want to duplicate, click Ctrl and drag the selected object somewhere else on the slide.

9. Skip to next: Ctrl+Enter

If you use a layout with multiple placeholders, you can skip to the next part of the template by clicking Ctrl+enter.

10. Undo: Ctrl+Z

Maybe one of the most commonly used shortcuts. If you do anything on a slide that you regret, you can save yourself a lot of time by clicking Ctrl+Z.

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