PowerPoint 2010: Reuse Slides

by AJ George

Sometimes it would really save time if you could reuse a slide from an existing presentation rather than have to copy and paste all of its elements to a new slide. Here's how to do that.

1. In Normal view, decide where in your presentation you would like to reuse a slide and select the slide directly before it. (PowerPoint will insert the slide after whatever slide you have selected.)
    
2. From the Home tab, choose Slides > New Slide > Reuse Slides.
   
   
   
   The Reuse Slides panel appears at the right.
    
3. Click the Browse button and select Browse File.
   
   
   
   The Browse dialog box appears.
    
4. Locate the presentation from which you would like to reuse slides and click Open.
   
   All of the slides from the presentation will appear in the Reuse Slides panel.
   
   Note: Checking the Keep source formatting option at the bottom of the Reuse Slides panel will import your old slides into the new presentation with whatever fonts, backgrounds, etc were used in the original presentation. If you decide to keep this unchecked, all of the slide's images, text and animation will be brought over, but the background and font formatting you have set up in the new presentation will be applied.
    
5. Select the slide(s) you would like to reuse.
   
   Your old slides have now been inserted. 

 

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About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Comments

[Ellen Finkelstein]

I find it useful to create a PowerPoint file with often-used slides, adding them with the technique you described. I call it "Slide Library." Then, when I need one of those slides in another presentation, I can go to that file (again using Reuse Slides), rather than having to remember and find where file is that contains the slide I need. So, in many cases, I just have to remember one file instead of many.