keyboard Archives - The PowerPoint Blog

Select Text with Keyboard Shortcut

Microsoft has some great text selection tools. Double click and the full word is selected. Three clicks and a paragraph is selected. Click and drag and the selection automatically jumps in full word intervals. What many presentation designers do not have is the keyboard equivalents to these text selection options – they are amazing for speeding up design time!

1. Select ALL text in a placeholder.

Click inside the text box, anywhere, and CTRL + A to select all (okay, most everyone knows this one)

select text 1

2. Select a paragraph

Click inside the text box, at the beginning of the paragraph, and CTRL + Shift + Down Arrow a full paragraph is highlighted.

select text 2

3. Select individual words

Click inside the text box, at the beginning of word to select, and CTRL + Shift + Right Arrow to select that word.
Click Right Arrow again to select the next word – repeat to select as many words needed

select text 3

select text 4

Okay, now it’s time to go edit slides more efficiently!

Troy @ TLC

Rotate Objects with Keyboard

There are many ways to do the same task in PowerPoint, and all Microsoft Office applications. Rotating objects is one that many find difficult and tedious when using the rotate anchor. Using keyboard shortcuts to rotate an object (or several objects at the same time) is an amazing shortcut to know about!

Select any shape

Rotating Objects with Keyboard 1

Use the keyboard to rotate the shape to the right with ALT + RIGHT ARROW. Hold the ALT key down and click the right arrow as many times as needed to get the rotation desired.

Rotating Objects with Keyboard 2

Rotating Objects with Keyboard 3

This is pretty much intuitive at this point, but ALT + LEFT ARROW will rotate the selected object(s) to the left. To go from the above rotation to the below rotation it was hold the ALT key and click the left arrow twice

Rotating Objects with Keyboard 4

Rotating Objects with Keyboard 5

Happy rotating!

Troy @ TLC