Be more efficient with the Quick Access Toolbar and Custom Ribbons
Quick Access Toolbar PowerPoint
Here's a short video that can help users become more efficient in minutes as we explore the Quick Access Toolbar and Custom Ribbons in PowerPoint.
Be more efficient with the Quick Access Toolbar and Custom Ribbons.
No doubt about it, PowerPoint is a great tool! Sometimes we find ourselves using features that take a little too long to get to though. What do I mean by too long? More than one click for something I use a lot. Some of you may be thinking, what about key commands? We'll get a post up about key commands one day, but memorizing those can be an exercise.
- For PC users, you can download and use our sample QAT. To quickly make your own custom QAT, try right-clicking on your favorite buttons in ppt and select "Add to Quick Access Toolbar".
- Mac users must click the "Customize Quick Access Toolbar" drop-down found at the end of the QAT and search for the commands they wish to add. Please note that (for now) on a MAC any functions available solely via plugin will not work in your QAT.
The first 9 items in the toolbar are the most useful on a PC as they can be easily activated by tapping Alt and then their corresponding number, if you are on a Mac you may want to put your most useful items in the middle. While it is subject to change for a specific project or task, this is pretty much how I keep it.
The first 3 are from the FREE PPTools hammer plugin, they are:
- Memorize: Learn the position (and optionally the size) of a selected object
- Hammer: Apply the memorized properties
- Options: Settings you would like a tool to memorize
YOUtools has similar functions to the hammer and is available on Mac. With YOUtools, you can right-click an object to copy its size and position, then paste a number of combinations of those attributes to another object. YOUtools also has the functions for my fourth and fifth slots with:
- Align to First: Toggle to apply alignment functions to the first object selected
- Fill Slide: Scale and distort object to fill the entire slide to its edges
PPT Quick Access Toolbar
The rest I believe are all native to PPT and are not from plugins, they are:
- Fill: Adjust a selected picture to be centered within and fill its crop and remove distortion
- Merge Shapes: Dropdown with useful options for creating custom shapes
- Crop: Button that is also a dropdown with useful features like crop to 1:1 ratio
- Reset Picture: Resets, color, crop and size to that of the source image
- Insert Picture: Inserts a picture to your layout
- Send to Back: Sends the selected object to the bottom-most layer of your slide
- Bring to Front: Sends the selected object to the top-most layer of your slide
- Distribute Horizontally: Evenly distributes selected objects horizontally
- Distribute Vertically: Evenly distributes selected objects vertically
- Rotate Objects: Useful for flipping objects vertically or horizontally, to rotate objects, hold alt and press the arrow keys
- Align Objects Left: Align the left edges of the selected objects
- Align Objects Center: Align the horizontal centers of the selected objects
- Align Objects Right: Align the right edges of the selected objects
- Align Objects Top: Align the top edges of the selected objects
- Align Objects Middle: Align the vertical middles of the selected objects
- Align Objects Bottom: Align the bottom edges of the selected objects
- Change Shape: Opens a menu to convert your current shape into another
- Edit Points: Allows custom shape editing to be done by hand, for more precise work, use merge shapes
- Convert to Smart Art Graphic: Will break bullets/paragraphs in a selected text box into all kinds of flowcharts and other useful design starting points
- Convert to Text: Can turn smart art back into a text box and other handy tricks
- Symbol: Insert a glyph
- Eyedropper Fill, Text Color, and Line Color: Apply any color to the selected shape. This tool, as well as eyedropper text fill and eyedropper outline, have been lifesavers when doing rapid prototyping and testing out palettes.
- Lock Aspect Ratio: Now works in the QAT! Great for resizing objects by holding shift and the arrow keys without distorting the object.
About The Author
Steve is a designer with high expectations for a final product but he tends to obsess over process too. He likes to know the many ways to get things done, the advantages of each and their oh so scary pitfalls. Perhaps that's why he has a Mac and a PC?
"Workflows are one of the few times in life where the best way tends to be the easy way, the trick is figuring out what's 'easy' for your specific situation."
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