Ten PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts to help you quickly design presentations

by Paul Baldwin | Apr 11, 2002 7:00:00 AM

Tags: Paul Baldwin

Takeaway: With PowerPoint quickly becoming a standard tool for organizations of all sizes, a few tips on designing PowerPoint presentations could come in handy. Here are 10 keyboard shortcuts to help you make the most of PowerPoint.

Being skillful and efficient at creating presentations in PowerPoint will help you go far in impressing clients with your communication skills. When you’re creating a presentation, you want to spend your time perfecting the ideas, not formatting the slides. Since there are no plans to expand the 24-hour day, how can you make the best use of your time to, as John Wooden said, ”Be quick without hurrying”?

We’ve compiled a list of 10 basic PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts to help you breeze through creating your presentations. If you use one that isn’t featured, tell us about it. Send us an e-mail describing the shortcut and its function. We’ll compile all the submitted shortcuts into a download.

PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts
[Shift][F3]
This shortcut changes the text case. For example, if you type Here is my presentation but want it in all caps, highlight the text and press [Shift][F3] to change the case.

[Ctrl]K
If you want to embed a link in your presentation, highlight the text and press [Ctrl]K to bring up the Edit Hyperlink dialog box.

[Ctrl]N
Do you need to produce more than one PowerPoint presentation? [Ctrl]N starts a new one quickly.

[Ctrl]T
Change fonts and formatting without using Format | Font. Highlight the text you want to change and press [Ctrl]T. To change the text on your entire presentation, highlight the slides in the task pane and then press [Ctrl]T to open the Font dialog box.

[Ctrl]F
Just as in Word and Excel, you can use Find—[Ctrl]F—to search for words in your presentation.

[Ctrl]E
Highlight your text and press [Ctrl]E to center a paragraph.

[F7]
Long after your audience has forgotten you, they’ll remember what you misspelled in your PowerPoint presentation. Make [F7] one of the last shortcuts you use to spell check your work before wrapping up your presentation.

[Ctrl][Shift][>], [Ctrl][Shift][<]
If you need a different font size, use these shortcuts to increase or decrease the size. For example, if you highlight a block of text in your presentation and use [Ctrl][Shift][>], you’ll increase the font by the same increments found in the Font dialog box. If you want to decrease your font size, [Ctrl][Shift][<] will take it down.

[Alt]U
Need to add lines, shapes, or a flowchart to your presentation? [Alt]U will open AutoShapes on the Drawing toolbar.

[Ctrl][=], [Ctrl][Shift][+]
Highlight text and use [Ctrl][=] to apply subscript formatting. Press [Ctrl][Shift][+] to apply superscript formatting.

Print/View all Posts Comments on this article

Keyboard? What am I, a typist? GRossKey | 04/10/02

Try doing without! NickNielsen | 04/11/02

Give up your keyboard and use electrodes designess@... | 04/11/02

Depends on what you do. terry.kirkpatrick | 05/01/02

Some of us hate the mouse servant_0az@... | 04/11/02

Say this really fast secretsaregood@... | 04/11/02

Not a typist, you are an END USER designess@... | 04/11/02

irammel@... | 04/11/02

typing kblackm@... | 04/11/02

you must have been looking... bennieb | 04/12/02

Time is money twomuch2do@... | 04/12/02

Not all can use a mouse SerferGrrl | 04/14/02

Shortcuts mmiller@... | 04/11/02

What you really wanted to see: secretsaregood@... | 04/11/02

Toggle Title and Point dnbruce@... | 04/11/02

Ctrl][Shift][>] = [Ctrl]] wordworker | 04/11/02

Discussions always better than articles miasma2003 | 04/15/02

get just the text out cmetrav@... | 05/09/02

I had a similar experience yi_yao_1986@... | 02/05/03