A rule of thumb for building professional-looking PowerPoint decks is aligning your shapes across different slides. Only schmucks don’t align their shapes through deck! This is something consulting and finance juniors have to learn quickly as they’re onboarding. That way, their slide elements don’t seem like they’re dancing around when flipping through their presentations. They stay visually fixed in place. Here are different ways you can go about it:
Copy-pasting the object
Method #1 is pretty self-explanatory. You just have to copy-paste the object on slide 1 to slide 2, and it will retain its position relative to the slide. This method is perfect, except… It only works when the two objects you want to align are exactly the same (e.g., the same breadcrumb icons across many slides).
Copy-pasting object 1 and aligning object 2 to it
If the objects you want to align aren’t exactly the same (e.g., tables with different content) then it’s a little harder. You will have to copy-paste table 1 to slide 2 as a reference object, then align table 2 to table 1, and then delete the reference table 1. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s a pain when you have to repeat those steps 18 times for those 18 slides you have in your deck.
Copy-pasting object positions with an add-in
There’s a reason why people who make PowerPoints all day don’t use the first 2 methods. They’re fine if you have a couple slides to make, but they’re way too slow if you’re churning out slides all day. With a PowerPoint add-in like PowerTools, you can copy the relative position of an object and paste it to any other objects on other slides.
This is such a popular feature amongst consultants that many add it to their quick access toolbar (QAT). That way, they can use their Alt-code shortcuts to align objects across slides. For example, I placed the ‘Copy Position’ tool in the 4th slot of my QAT, and ‘Paste Position’ in the 5th slot. That way, ALT+4 – ALT+5 allow me to quickly copy-paste the position of any object. That’s because I’m no schmuck ; ) I want similar objects on my slides to have the same position.
