Did you know that PowerPoint has hundreds of different keyboard shortcuts?
Throughout my career in consulting and corporate strategy, I
used many of these shortcuts.
And I've noticed there's a bunch of shortcuts that most people never heard
of that can really save them time.
In this video, I'm going to cover my 10 favorite hidden PowerPoint shortcuts.
I'll explain the PC version of the shortcut and when to use it, and where
possible, I'll give you the Mac version as well, but if you're not already
somewhat advanced, make sure you also check out the video link to the top of
the screen, to see my recommendation for the eight best PowerPoint hacks available.
It's one of our most popular videos and I can promise you, it will
completely change how you build slides.
Alright, here we go.
The first shortcut on our list, lets you cycle your texts between
uppercase and lowercase letters.
So if I take this word right here and highlight it, then hit Shift + F3, the
letters in the word all become uppercase.
Then if I hit it again they become lowercase.
Then if I hit Shift + F3 one more time just the first letter
in the word becomes capitalized.
Now, if you just need to adjust a single word, this shortcut isn't that useful.
But if you need to change multiple words at one time, then this
shortcut can be really powerful.
Let's pretend I want to change the text in each of these boxes to be all uppercase.
I can just select each of these by holding Shift and clicking on each, then use my
shortcut Shift + F3 and there you go.
And for Mac users, by the way, it's the same exact shortcut- Shift + F3.
Shortcut number two is probably the most well-known on this list.
It's a shortcut that lets you maintain proportions as you resize an object.
Whenever I want to insert a box for example, it can be hard to
make sure the box is square.
But if I just hold the shift key like this, it'll be
perfectly square every time.
Or if the box starts off as a rectangle and I want to make it bigger, I can
again hold the shift key and the proportions will stay the exact same.
Where this really comes in handy though is with photos or pictures.
If you need to make the photo bigger or smaller, just make sure you hold
the shift key, then grab the corners of the photo and resize it like this,
and you won't have to worry about it getting scrunched or looking weird.
You don't have to worry about doing this if the aspect ratio is already locked,
but it's not always set that way and it can lead to some weird looking photos.
So, hold the shift key and you're good to go.
And for Mac users, it's the exact same shortcut.
Shortcut number three: adding footnote.
If you're someone who builds content or data heavy presentations, like
what you might see in most business environments, you've probably had to
add a footnote to your slide before.
And there's a few ways you can do this- you can add a normal number here, then
highlight it then open the font dialog box, then try to remember if it's supposed
to be superscript or subscript, then guests wrong and come back and choose the
other one and then finally you have the tiny number that tells people to check the
bottom of the slide for more information.
Or you could search for one at Google and copy and paste
it directly into your slide.
We've definitely all done this one before.
But the smarter way is to just hit Control + Shift + Plus Sign and voila!
you've got your tiny number.
For Mac users, it's the same thing, control, not the command
key, Control + Shift + Plus Sign.
Next is number four, which is the shortcut you'll use in presentation mode.
Let's say I'm presenting and I want to jump to another slide.
There's lots of ways to do this- I can exit the presentation and find the slide
I need then restart the presentation.
I can click through the presentation until I get to the slide I want, or if I know
the slide number I'm trying to get to I can even just type that number in and
hit enter, and it'll take me right there.
But in most cases, you don't know the slide number, so instead of clicking
through each slide, just take Control + S to bring up a list of slides, find
the slide you need and click go to.
For Mac users by the way, you don't have this shortcut, but you
actually can just right click on the presentation, then go to "By
Title" and click on the one you want.
PC users for some reason don't have this option, but you do.
All right, number five is another shortcut that you think you wouldn't
use that often, but once you start using it, you'll be grateful you know that.
It's a shortcut that opens your thesaurus, and hear me out on this one.
If you have a text heavy slide, you want to avoid using the same word over and
over, especially if that word is at the start of a sentence and your thesaurus
can help you mix it up a little bit.
So what I do here is look for a word I want to replace, let's say this one
because I already used it somewhere else.
Highlight it, and I can do that by just double clicking on it, then hit
Alt + R + E not at the same time though, separately, Alt then R then E, click
on this little arrow next to the one you want and select insert, or an even
faster way, if you don't need to see a bunch of different words is to just
right click on the word, go down to synonyms and select the one you want.
I personally prefer to open up thesaurus because it gives you
more options, but it's up to you.
For Mac users, you can't get to your synonyms quite as quickly, but you can
open your thesaurus by hitting Control + Option + Command + R all at the same time.
Shortcut number six is when I'm guessing very few people know.
It's a shortcut that lets you move your bullets up and down in a list.
So let me show you what that means.
Let's say I have this list of bullets here but I decided that I'd like this
top one to be down towards the bottom.
With my cursor, anywhere on this line I just hold Shift + Alt + Down
arrow to move it like this.
Or if I want to move it back up, I just do the same thing with the up arrow.
I can even move it to a different paragraph, like if I wanted to move
it to this top section right here.
By the way, here's a bonus tip: not only does this sharp cut also work
in Microsoft word, but it works in a number of other places including
Google docs and Google slides.
Who knew?
Mac users I'm sorry to say I don't think you'd get this one.
Alright, now into what might be my favorite shortcut could have the list.
And this one isn't fancy.
It's just a simple, humble, little shortcut that will make using PowerPoint
just a little bit less annoying.
Especially if you're at the level where you're trying to
minimize your use of the mouse.
It's a shortcut that lets you close this pop-out box right here.
Let's say I'm editing some of the features of my shape and I'm all
done, but I don't want to put my hand back on the mouse to find this
tiny little X to close the box out.
It sounds petty, but for some reason, I'm in this situation all the time.
And if you're someone who uses the keyboard a lot, like I
do, this can be a time-saver.
To close it out, just hold the Control + Spacebar, then hit C and there you go.
Now, if you try to do this and it doesn't work, it probably means that
you don't have the pop-up box selected.
So to select it first, just hit the F6 key.
Then use the shortcut Control + Spacebar then C.
And again, sorry Mac users you don't get this one here either.
Alright, number eight.
Most people know that you can copy something using Control + C, then
paste it by hitting Control + V.
But sometimes you want to go back and paste something you've copied earlier.
Or if you're copying multiple things over, you don't want to keep going back
and forth to copy and paste each thing.
Well, did you know that Microsoft stores, what you've copied in the
clipboard, which you can access by hitting Alt then H then F + O.
So if I need to copy multiple words or paragraphs over to another slide,
I can just copy them each, then go to the new slide and hit Alt + H
+ F + O and paste them in one by one.
And of course, I'm going to close this by hitting Control + Spacebar, then C.
I'm sure this one's possible on a Mac, but I couldn't quite figure it out.
So if anyone knows how to do this, then please let me know down in the comments.
Alright, shortcut number nine on a list is when you should definitely
be using if you're not already.
It's just a simple shortcut that lets you increase or decrease your font size.
To increase your font size, just hold the Control + Shift and the greater
than sign here or to decrease, do the same thing except if the less than sign.
And you can do this just to a single word or all the texts in a box, or
even all the texts on a slide, even for texts that's at different sizes.
There are other quick ways to change your font size, but this is definitely
the most intuitive in my opinion.
And once you start using it, it'll be easy to remember.
For Mac users it's very similar except you'll use the command key.
So Shift + Command + Greater than or, Shift + Command + Less than sign.
Okay, the last shortcut on our list is Control + F1, which lets
you hide the ribbon like this.
It's useful when you need a little bit more space to work with, especially if
you're working on a small laptop and you've got a bunch of texts or small
numbers that you want to be able to see easily without having to zoom in and out.
The other thing that's great about this shortcut is that all the ribbon
commands still work like normal.
I can click on any of these tabs and the commands still just popped out like this.
Mac users, you can use the same shortcut by hitting Option + Command
+ R .Don't ask me why it's that combination of keys, but it just is.
Thanks for watching today's video.
Let me know down in the comments if any of these were new to you,
or which ones you already knew.
I'd also love to hear your favorite hidden PowerPoint shortcuts that
I didn't cover, or really just any PowerPoint tips you have that you
want to share with everybody else.
If you haven't already make sure you check out our list of the top 50
PowerPoint shortcuts for consultants, which you can get for free on our website.
I'll link to that down below.
We also have great courses for people in consulting, strategy,
finance, or really anyone that uses PowerPoint on a day-to-day basis.
You can read more about each and watch some preview videos over at
our website, the analyst academy.com.
Thanks.