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PowerPoint Shortcuts

By Henry Davies |

Reviewed By Rebecca Baldridge |

January 26, 2024

Everything we do in PowerPoint is controlled by the ribbon, which can be accessed with either the mouse or the keyboard. Here are several PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts to help build and format slides more efficiently.

PowerPoint Shortcuts for Making a Presentation

Ctrl + N: New presentation
Ctrl + O: Open presentation
Ctrl + M: Insert a new slide
Ctrl + D: Close a presentation
Ctrl + Shift + D: Make a copy of the selected slide
Ctrl + F1: Show/hide the ribbon
Alt + F10: Show/hide selection pane

Combined Mouse-Keyboard Shortcuts

Shift + Select Item with Mouse: Adds the item to the current selection
Ctrl + Move Item with Mouse: Duplicates the selected item
Shift + Move Item with Mouse: Restricts movement of item to straight up/down or left/right
Ctrl + Resize Item with Mouse: Resizes the item around its center
Shift + Resize Item with Mouse: Keep the original proportions of the item while resizing

Microsoft Shortcuts

Some key shortcuts can be used across Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, and Excel.

Alt: Display shortcuts in the ribbon
Ctrl + B: Bold
Ctrl + I: Italic
Ctrl + U: Underline
Ctrl + C: Copy
Ctrl + V: Paste
Ctrl + F: Find
Shift + F4: Repeat the last Find action
Ctrl + H: Replace
Ctrl + X: Cut selected object or text
Ctrl + A: Select all
Ctrl + Alt + M: Insert a new comment

PowerPoint Shortcuts for Working with Objects and Text

When building PowerPoint slides it can be time consuming to format text and objects. PowerPoint has a number of shortcuts to help align, resize, and group objects and text to help make formatting slides easier and more efficient.

Ctrl + A: Select all objects in slide
Ctrl + G: Group
Ctrl + Shift + G: Ungroup
Ctrl + K: Insert hyperlink
Ctrl + D: Duplicate selected object
Ctrl + Shift + >: Increase font size
Ctrl + Shift + <: Decrease font size
Ctrl + Shift + Plus Sign (+): Superscript
Ctrl + Plus Sign (+) =: Subscript
Alt + Equal sign (=): Insert equation

Aligning and Positioning Objects and Text in PowerPoint

Ctrl + L: Left align
Ctrl + R: Right align
Ctrl + J: Justify align
Ctrl + E: Center align
Alt + H + G +A + L: Left align shapes
Alt + H + G +A + R: Right align shapes
Alt + H + G +A + T: Align shapes top
Alt + H + G +A + B: Align shapes bottom
Ctrl + Left Bracket: Send object back one position
Ctrl + Right Bracket: Send object forward one position
Ctrl + Shift + Left Bracket: Send object to back
Ctrl + Shift + Right Bracket: Send object to front

Creating a Bulleted List using Different Styles

Do one of the following:

To create a list that uses filled round bullets, press the Asterisk sign (*).
To create a list that uses hyphens, press the Minus sign (-).
To create a list that uses arrow bullets, press the Right angle bracket (>).
To create a list that uses diamonds, press Left angle bracket (<) + Right angle bracket (>).
To create a list that uses arrows, press two minus signs (-) + Right angle bracket (>).
To create a list that uses double arrows, press the Equal sign ( = ) + Right angle bracket (>).

Press Spacebar.
Type the list item, and then press Enter.

Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)

Wouldn’t it be great if we could access shortcuts even faster? PowerPoints Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) uses letters to identify each of the menus and the sub menus and the numbers 1 to 5 that identify shortcut keys for these commands, to make shortcuts even faster. The default shortcuts in the QAT are auto save, save, undo, redo, and start presentation from beginning. These have their own unique keyboard shortcuts that are easy to remember:

Ctrl + S: Save
Ctrl + Z: Undo
Ctrl + Y: Redo
Ctrl + F5: Start the presentation from the beginning

These shortcuts are simple and can often be easily memorized. So, what we can do is customize the QAT to do things that are useful to us, that don’t have quick shortcuts. To add a new shortcut, right click on a tool to add it to the QAT. For example, to add Align Top to the QAT, open Arrange on the Home ribbon, select Align, and then right click on Align Top to Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

PowerPoint Shortcuts