PowerPoint is a powerhouse. To achieve success with it, you need the right setup. Here are a few key settings you should know before you start designing your presentation.

It’s important to be able to recover enough steps if you reach a point where you need to go back in your changes. You know how life-saving the undo option is. Let’s show you a hack to extend the number of times you can abuse the Ctrl-Z action.

Go to your PowerPoint Options and open the Advanced settings.

(Home > Options > Advanced)

In the Editing Options, you have a setting called Maximum number of undos. Bump this up from the default value of 20 to something like… 50 or 60.

It goes without saying that the undo setting is something basic and familiar. However, when you need it the most, this extended limitation can be vital in terms of the time you have to work on your presentation. Being able to undo enough steps to let you recover changes can be a lifesaver.

Important note: The maximum number that Microsoft allows here is 150, but this is not recommended due to heavy potential loads on your memory.

Imagine you just finished an epic presentation with 120 slides and it feels like it took you an eternity to complete. And now you realize you used the wrong font.

Bummer!

Now you have to go through every single slide, select the text and manually change the right font… but what if you could do that much faster?

Instead of doing it slide by slide, you can change the global font of your presentation with a couple of clicks and save tons of time.

Go to your PowerPoint Home tab and find the setting called Replace in the Editing section.

The field lets you select the font you want to change and then select the font you want to replace it with.

So for instance if you have used Arial in certain slides but it needs to be changed, or if you’ve used the wrong font in your entire presentation… this is where you fix it. Instantly.

Important note: If the loading is taking a while – give it enough time! Don’t rush to kill the application.

It’s obvious that keeping consistent branding requires using the same colors throughout your slides. One of the simplest tools to use for changing colors fast is the eyedropper tool in your Home tab.

By default, the eyedropper is limited only to your slide. Meaning, you can only get colors that are already present in the slide you’re currently editing.

However, you can go past that using a small hack that PowerPoint allows. Once you select the Eyedropper simply click and hold the left mouse button and then drag it to wherever you want on your screen while holding it down to select the color you want.

Press & hold the left mouse button + drag and select the desired color.

Important note: This also works for selecting colors from objects that are outside of your PowerPoint presentation.

That’s the fastest way you can instantly select the color you need for any element in your current slide. It’s a very handy little hack that saves you tons of time and makes you wonder… how didn’t I think of that before?

Can you animate an Excel table in PowerPoint? It’s in almost every presentation you’ve ever seen – the good old table chart. Now we’ll show you a trick to animate your table charts and make them more engaging. Most importantly – easier for your audience to understand.

When you already have a table chart in your slide but want to animate its separate elements, there are a few steps you need to take.

If you simply select the whole table and go to Animations to pick the one you want… it simply shows the entire chart. Let’s show you how to go around that.

1. Create a new slide

2. Copy the table chart

3. Paste it into the new slide by selecting Paste Special from the Paste Options

4. Paste as Picture (Enhanced Metafile)

5. Go to Picture Format in the PowerPoint menu

6. Select the Group menu and click Ungroup (Repeat action twice)

7. Select and edit animations for each separate table chart object

Now you can add any animation you’d like to any element in your chart. This way you can control your table charts so the data inside appear bit by bit so it’s easier on your viewers while you present. It also gives you more time as a presenter to carefully assess each piece of data you’re highlighting.

There are tons of resources around the web on effective data visualization. But from what we’ve seen, people underestimate the power of a visualization that clarifies the data, instead of complicating it even more. In this webinar, we are focused on bar charts and bar charts only.

As they are one of the most popular ways to visualize data, we thought you would love to know how to:

1. Avoid common mistakes when building bar charts
2. Improve your current bar charts right away
3. Design charts that help people understand data instantly
4. Add immersive animations that add meaning and context
5. Use PowerPoint settings and steps to adjust charts fast

We will reveal several steps and best practices that will instantly improve the bar charts you use in presentations.

In the end, your audience will thank you, and we all know what a happy audience leads to. ?

Hope you liked these time-saving PowerPoint hacks! Signup for Part 1 and Part 2 of our next webinars that will cover the topics of presentation templates. Learn how you can start designing multiple custom presentations that keep your brand consistent and help achieve your business goals.