POWER POINT: TIPS & TRICKS

Using Ctrl-Drag to Copy

You can quickly make a copy of any object by holding down the CTRL key while you drag on the object. You will then "drag off" a new copy.

Easily Changing from Caps to Lower Case (or Vice Versa)

If you have text that is in the wrong case, select the text, and then click Shift+F3 until it changes to the case style that you like. Clicking Shift+F3 toggles the text case between ALL CAPS, lower case, and Initial Capital styles. You'll be surprised how often you use this once you get the hang of it!

Using Different Backgrounds within one Presentation

Users of PowerPoint 2000 and lower will only have two background designs automatically supplied with the Masters (counting both the Slide Master and the Title Master). However, you can have any design you want on any slide. From the Format menu, select Background. Check the box that says "omit background items" and this will make the slide ignore the Slide Master's design. You are now free to add whatever design you want to this slide. If you want to do this to many slides at once, go to the Slide Sorter, select the slides, and then use the Format menu command. Remember, if you choose to do something like put a photographic background on many of your slides instead of doing it once on the Master, your file size may increase dramatically.

PowerPoint 2002 supports multiple background masters.

Templates
Backgrounds / 100 free backgrounds
Brainy Betty / Templates and tutorials
Templates 1 / Download templates from Graphicsland
Templates 2 / Free templates for students and educators
Templates 3 / Select from many free templates
Template Builder / Free PowerPoint template builder
Template Ready / Free PowerPoint templates categorized by themes

Hyperlink to a Specific Slide in Another Presentation,

If you would like to hyperlink to another presentation, you might not want to link to the first slide. Suppose you want to start with slide 3? Remember that hyperlinks only work in Slide Show view.

Caution: If you'll be travelling, first put the second presentation in the same folder as the current presentation. Then be sure to take the second presentation with you -- for example, if you'll copy your main presentation to a laptop, be sure to copy the presentation that you're linking to as well.

  1. Select the object on the slide that you want to use for the hyperlink.
  2. Choose Insert > Hyperlink or press Ctrl-K.
  3. In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, choose Existing File or Web Page from the Link To bar at the left.
  4. Click the Bookmark button.
  5. The Select a Place in Document dialog box opens, listing all the slides in the presentation to which you're linking.


  1. Choose the slide you want and click OK.

Note: If your object is an Action Button, the Action Settings dialog box opens. Choose the Hyperlink To option. From the drop-down list, choose Other PowerPoint Presentation. Navigate to the presentation and click OK. The Hyperlink to Slide dialog box opens, which is just like the Select Place in Document dialog box, listing the slides. Choose the one you want and click OK twice.

In Slide Show view, click the object and the other PowerPoint presentation opens, displaying the slide you selected. You can continue to show the following slides of the other presentation if you want. Press Esc to close the other presentation and return to your original location in the first presentation.

Hyperlink to a Specific Location in Another File

You can link to a specific location in a Word or Excel file as well.

Note: In Word, to create a bookmark, you choose Insert > Bookmark. Enter the bookmark name (no spaces; it can't start with a number), and click Add. In Excel, select a cell or range of cells. In the Name box (on the left, above the top-left cell), enter a name and press Enter.

  1. Create the bookmark or named range and remember the name.
  2. Select the object on the slide that you want to use for the hyperlink.
  3. Choose Insert > Hyperlink or press Ctrl-K.
  4. In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, choose Existing File or Web Page from the Link To bar at the left.
  5. Click the Bookmark button. Well, this is what you're supposed to do, but you'll get an error message! Here you see it after I've clicked the Show Help button.

  1. Click OK to get out of that! You're back in the Insert Hyperlink dialog box and you can see your document in the Address text box. Here's the trick: at the end of the address enter # (the pound sign) and the name of the bookmark or named range, as you see here.

Note: In fact, you can use this technique for PowerPoint presentations: add # and the slide title, which is the slide number, a period, and the slide title (spaces are OK). You can see an example here. If you edit the hyperlink, you'll see that PowerPoint has put %20 in each space. That's HTML code for a space and you can leave it as is.

  1. Click OK and you're done.

Create Vertically Stacked Text

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Enter your text. Format it center aligned. Now grab the left or right edge of the text box and drag it to make the text box as narrow as possible. That's it!

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