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.