Here’s a tip that will make you much more efficient at PowerPoint: Don’t stick with the default PowerPoint ribbons and Quick Access Toolbar. Customizing these toolbars will help you streamline your workflow. This is why the vast majority of PowerPoint power users take the time to set up their tools. In this guide, we’ll show you how to tweak the your PowerPoint Ribbon and Quick Access Toolbar to take your PowerPoint experience to the next level.
Customizing the Ribbon
The Ribbon is the bar at the top of PowerPoint that shows all your tabs and tools. PowerPoint comes with a standard ribbon, but you can customize depending on which tools you use most.
Customizing the Ribbon allows you to put your most-used tools front and center, so you don’t have to waste time digging through multiple tabs. Here’s how to do it:
- Right-click on the ribbon and select “Customize the Ribbon”.
- From there, you can create new tabs and groups, rename them, and add or remove tools.
If you’ve already customized your ribbon and want to use the same setup on a different device, you can easily export and import it. To do this:
- Go to “Customize the Ribbon” and click “Import/Export”.
- Select the option to import the ribbon from another device.
Adding tools to the Ribbon
You might be wondering why your co-workers have tools in their ribbons that you do not have access to. This is most likely because they have a PowerPoint add-in installed. A PowerPoint add-in, like PowerTools, is a software that expands the features available in Microsoft PowerPoint. It is an authorized method to boost functionality and, once installed, it appear as an additional ribbon in PowerPoint. For instance, when you download the PowerTools add-in, it shows up in the following way.
Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar is a small, customizable toolbar that gives you quick access to the tools you use the most. This is where you’ll really get your money’s worth because you can access all the tools in your Quick Access Toolbar with Alt-code shortcuts. But first, here’s how to set it up:
- Click the down arrow at the top of the screen.
- A menu will appear and click on “More Commands…”
- Now add or remove tools that you would like to have featured in your toolbar.
To make your Quick Access Toolbar even more powerful, you can position it under your Ribbon. Most PowerPoint ‘connoisseurs’ do this because they hardly ever have to go in the Ribbon and would rather have the Quick Access Toolbar closer to their slide. Here’s how to place it under your Ribbon:
- Click the down arrow at the top of the screen.
- A menu will appear and click on “Show below the ribbon”
Using Quick Access Toolbar shortcuts
‘ALT+(any number)’ will action the tool in that number’s position on your Quick Access Toolbar. These are called ‘Alt-code’ shortcuts. Below is how I set up the first five slots of my toolbar (including some features from PowerTools), but you should prioritize the tools that you use most.
- ALT+1: If there’s one thing you should do after reading this article, it’s placing the ‘Align objects’ tool in the first position of your toolbar. This way, you can type ‘ALT+1+L’ to align left, ‘ALT+1+R’ to align right, ‘ALT+1+T’ to align top, so on and so forth…
- ALT+2: Match to first is used to match the formatting and size of all objects to the first selected objects. A common use case for this tool is when adding a new icon to your deck and want its formatting and size to match the icons currently on that slide.
- ALT+3: Swap position is pretty self explanatory; it swaps the positions of 2 selected objects. This tool is used every time you want to replace an object with another. For example, when your manager asks you to change an icon for another one, you can
- Add that new icon to the slide
- Select the original icon and then the new one
- Type ALT+2 then ALT+3 to match their size and formatting and then swap the icons’ positions.
- ALT+4 and ALT+5: Copy and paste position is a game changer when you want the same object (e.g., title, subtitle, breadcrumbs) on many slides to have the same position. That way, those slide elements won’t dance around when flipping through your presentation, they’ll stay fixed.
These changes may seem like a hassle to make, but trust me, they will without a doubt save you tons of time in the long run.
