10 essential PowerPoint hacks

Knowing the hacks of any common program changes the way you work and increases the flexibility of what you can create. PowerPoint hacks are useful for any business person looking to make the best impression at a meeting.

Navigate the creative and editing process in PowerPoint and nail your next presentation with some of these hacks and tips you didn’t realise were quite literally at your fingertips.

1. Keyboard shortcuts

Learn to use the keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint. It'll save time and make you look like a presentation wizard. For example, The shift key performs many essential functions. As you manipulate images, hold the shift key to avoid skewing the images, to select multiple objects or to move items in a straight line across the slide.

2. Alignment

The audience will notice if your images are not aligned. Rather than guessing, select multiple objects, go under the formatting tab and find the align tool in the Arrange group.

3. Preview

You can also avoid switching between edit and preview. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the ‘slide show view’ to display a preview window.

4. File size

A PowerPoint file size can be too large to upload or email. Fix this by selecting an image, the formatting tab, and ‘Compress Picture’ in the Adjust group.

5. Create an invisible hyperlink

Insert a square and format it to ‘no fill’ and ‘no line.’ Select the shape and press Ctrl+K. Paste the link into the address space and click ‘OK.’ This is a great solution if you don’t want any of the text to appear different from the rest of your message, but need to include a link.

6. Control the show

Start the show by pressing F5 and use N to advance. If your audience raises a question about the slide you just finished, use P to go back.

7. Open a hyperlink

Rather than taking your cursor for a stroll across the page in full view of the audience, tab to the link you want to open and push enter.

8. Jump to any slide

If you refer back to a point you already made, enter the slide number and hit enter. Familiarity with your presentation and a spare printout can come in handy.

9. Make a point

Bring the attention of the audience away from the slideshow and back to you. To make the screen black, press ‘B’ or the period key.

10. A flawless ending

Clicking past the end slide is an easy blunder. If you duplicate the last slide of your presentation and leave a blank one at the end, you have more time to stop. The audience won’t see the show revert back to the program.

Many of us take the basic knowledge of PowerPoint for granted. Learning the shortcuts, hacks and extra functions will take your presentation skills to the next level.