Last week I shared a couple of the lesser-known PowerPoint tricks to help speed up your workflow. This week, a few more...
Change Your Point of View... Faster
You can switch your View options by using the View tab on the Ribbon. A faster way is to use the buttons at the bottom right of the screen.
What you may not know is that holding down the [Shift] key when you click these buttons will provide even more shortcuts. To view the Master Slides, hold down [Shift] and click the Normal view button (the first one). To view the Notes Slides, hold down [Shift] and click the Slide Sorter view button (the second one). Holding down [Shift] and clicking either the Reading or Slide Show view buttons (the third and fourth buttons) will bring up the Set Up Show dialog box.
Move--But Just a Little
Have you ever tried to move something (clip art perhaps) with your mouse and found that it wouldn't move to the exact spot you wanted it to? Using the arrow keys on your keyboard will help this, but by default it will nudge the image 6 points. If this is still too far for that exact spot you are aiming for, hold down the [Ctrl] key when you are using the directional arrow key. This will move the object just 1.25 points each time instead.
You can also adjust your settings so that by default objects are nudged 1.25 points. On the View tab, click the more arrow from the Show group to open the Grid and Guides dialog box. Disable Snap objects to grid by removing the checkmark.
Be a Point Magician
I am constantly having to edit clip-art for clients so that they are more suitable for the overall look and feel of a project. Typically I do this by editing the points (right-click and choose Edit Points) of the graphic.
If a graphic needs lots of points, adding and deleting them can become an arduous task. For instance, every time you come across a point you want to delete you have to select it, right-click and choose Delete Point. I discovered a simple time-saver to this process. Press [Ctrl] on the keyboard when selecting a point and the point is immediately deleted. Likewise, pressing [Ctrl] and clicking somewhere on the red line without a point automatically adds a point.
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."
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