PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Duplicate Slides in PowerPoint 365 for Windows

Geetesh Bajaj — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:45:07 +0000

Duplicating slides in PowerPoint 365 for Windows is a simple yet powerful technique that can dramatically speed up your workflow. Whether you’re building a presentation from a consistent template, reusing layouts, or experimenting with variations of a design, duplication helps you work smarter with minimal effort. This guide walks you through the different ways to duplicate slides: using right click menus, keyboard shortcuts, and the Ribbon, so you can choose the method that fits your style. Mastering this small skill can make a big difference in how efficiently you create, refine, and deliver your presentations.

Learn quick methods to duplicate slides in PowerPoint 365 for Windows.

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ToolsToo 12.1: Conversation with Gil Segal

Geetesh Bajaj — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:30:59 +0000

Gil Segal is the creator of ToolsToo Pro for PowerPoint and an expert technologist with a deep understanding of a wide range of architectures, tools, and technologies and their impact. Gil is always on the lookout for ways to automate manual tasks in any software he uses and has been a PowerPoint power-user since the mid 90’s.

In this conversation, Gil discusses the new version 12.1 of ToolsToo Pro for PowerPoint.

Geetesh: Gil, ToolsToo 12.1.0 introduces smaller but very practical tools such as the new Chain tool for Select All, and the Flip Shape Direction and Flip Slide Direction options. Can you explain these options?

Gil: The new tools in ToolsToo Pro for PowerPoint V12.1.0 are primarily intended to tackle flipping shapes and slides from left-to-right orientation to right-to-left orientation or vice versa. There are a lot of adjustments needed when performing these flips, so we’ll delve into the details of what the tools do.

Flip Shape Direction: This tool does the following for each selected shape:

Changes text direction from left-to-right to right-to-left or vice versa
If the shape is a chart:

Changes plot order of x-axis
Changes series order
Changes text direction
Changes legend location

If the shape is SmartArt, reverses direction
If the shape is a table:

Changes column order
Changes cell text direction

Changes animation wipe direction
Flips gradient direction

Flip Slide Direction: This tool flips slides by calling the Flip Shape Direction tool for each shape on each selected slide. However, instead of changing gradient direction, the Flip Slide Direction tool mirrors the position of each shape on the slide, adjusting motion paths for the new location, and then flips the shapes themselves.

Before Flip Slide Direction

After Flip Slide Direction

Select All: This tool selects all the shapes on the current slide. It can only be used a part of a tool chain – a series of tools invoked with a single click. You can easily build chains by selecting tools in a simple dialog – no programming required – and can run the chain at any time with your current shape selection or iteratively on all selected slides. The Select All chain tool works particularly well with Flip Shape Direction tool, essentially adding a tool that can flip shape direction for all shapes on all selected slides.

Geetesh: Were these additions driven by specific user requests or by patterns you noticed in how people build diagrams and templates in PowerPoint?

Gil: These additions were driven primarily by nearly identical requests from multiple users and the observation that a sizable portion of the ToolsToo Pro for PowerPoint customer base is in countries with right-to-left languages.

Geetesh: ToolsToo has steadily evolved over many versions, with each release addressing small but meaningful PowerPoint workflow challenges. As you continue to refine the add-in beyond version 12.1.0, are there particular areas of the PowerPoint experience where you still see significant opportunities for ToolsToo to improve productivity?

Gil: There are many significant opportunities for ToolsToo to further improve PowerPoint productivity. For example, two areas that could use significant improvement are slide reusability and ease of changing designs.

Everybody is talking about AI these days. It is yet unclear what impact AI will have on the kinds of things ToolsToo does but I can imagine a “fix my slide” feature that will just automatically do alignments, resizing, spacing, make lines horizontal/vertical, make same rounded corners, etc. to just make a slide look good with a single click. As to how much of that Microsoft does vs what is left to tools like ToolsToo Pro for PowerPoint, that is yet to be seen.

Another expansion area for ToolsToo would be a Mac version. ToolsToo has always run on Windows-based PCs only, but I do get a large number of requests for a Mac version.

Lastly but perhaps most importantly, there’s always customer requests. Keep them coming!

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

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PowerPoint and Presenting News: March 24, 2026

Geetesh Bajaj — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 04:30:33 +0000

In this issue, we explore how timeless principles meet modern presentation practice. Drawing inspiration from lessons as far back as 1832, we see that clarity of thought and purpose has always been at the heart of effective communication. That same discipline applies today when you reset slides to restore structure and consistency, ensuring your content aligns with the intended design. We also look at applying theme colors and fonts—small choices that create a cohesive visual identity across every slide. Together, these ideas remind us that while tools evolve, great presentations still rely on clear structure, thoughtful design, and enduring principles of communication.

Stay updated with the latest tutorials, tips, and news on PowerPoint and presentation techniques.

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Applying Theme Colors and Theme Fonts in PowerPoint 365 for Windows

Geetesh Bajaj — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 03:45:32 +0000

Applying Theme Colors and Theme Fonts in PowerPoint gives you a quick, precise way to refresh your presentation’s look without committing to a full theme or template overhaul. Whether you want a subtle visual update or need to match brand guidelines, PowerPoint lets you mix and match coordinated color palettes and font pairs with ease. This tutorial walks you through where to find these options, how to preview them, and the best ways to apply them across your slides. With a few thoughtful choices, you can elevate clarity, consistency, and visual impact in minutes.

Learn how to apply Theme Colors and Theme Fonts in PowerPoint 365 for Windows.

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PowerPoint and Presenting News: March 17, 2026

Geetesh Bajaj — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:30:04 +0000

In this issue, we explore how presentations evolve when ideas, tools, and inspiration come together. We begin with practical skills such as selecting slides in PowerPoint—small techniques that dramatically improve how you organize and manage large decks. We then look at innovation in presentation workflows through conversations with creators like Andreja Zujkovic of DeckFinder and Kartik Sundar of TeamSlide, whose tools help teams find, reuse, and even generate slides faster. These advances reflect a broader shift toward smarter presentation ecosystems where content is searchable, reusable, and increasingly AI-assisted. Finally, we turn to storytelling and influence, drawing inspiration from the Cyrano parable and Rodney Saulsberry’s exploration of the mogul mindset of Michael Jackson—reminding us that great presentations blend technology with timeless narrative power.

Stay updated with the latest tutorials, tips, and news on PowerPoint and presentation techniques.

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Reset Slides in PowerPoint 365 for Windows

Geetesh Bajaj — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 03:45:45 +0000

Occasionally, you may encounter slides that are difficult to view comfortably. When slide elements don’t seem to have any visual cohesion, audiences shift their focus from the speaker to the screen, trying to interpret what they see. When that happens, the message itself becomes secondary. At this stage, the goal is to remove unnecessary formatting and restore a simpler structure to the slide. You may also need to adjust the position, size, and text layout of the placeholders to re-establish order and clarity. Fortunately, PowerPoint offers a straightforward, one-click way to address this: the Reset option.

Learn how to reset your slide formatting with one click in PowerPoint 365 for Windows.

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DeckFinder: Conversation with Andreja Zujkovic

Geetesh Bajaj — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 04:00:21 +0000

Andreja Zujkovic is the founder of IceFyre, a company specializing exclusively in automating PowerPoint and Microsoft 365. He earned a degree in Computer Science in Belgrade in 2007 and, after more than a decade in the IT industry, founded IceFyre. Today, the company brings together a team of engineers working within the Microsoft Office 365 ecosystem with over 10 years of experience in the slide creation industry. Specializing in the creative sector, Andreja focuses on improving PowerPoint productivity by streamlining processes and integrating innovative tools that enhance presentation workflows. Outside of work, he is passionate about leadership, public speaking, kickboxing, and staying up to date with the latest technology trends.

In this conversation, Andreja explores his DeckFinder solution for searching PowerPoint slides.

Geetesh: Andreja, tell us a little about DeckFinder. Also, was DeckFinder born from a client request, or did it emerge from patterns you kept seeing across organizations?

Andreja: That’s actually one of my favorite questions, because DeckFinder was born from a very real problem we kept seeing while working with clients. At IceFyre, we work with teams that produce a large volume of PowerPoint presentations. Our focus has been on optimizing and automating PowerPoint workflows to help designers improve their productivity. During that work, we identified a pattern across two distinct customer groups.

The first group consists of companies that generate thousands of slides every year, whether they are consulting teams, marketing departments, sales teams, or creative agencies. The second group includes presentation consumers – corporate users, usually from HR, sales, or finance people who communicate internally or externally through PowerPoint.

For both groups, slide content or specific assets from past presentations are often difficult to find. As a result, users waste a surprising amount of time searching through network drives, Slack or Teams conversations, emails, and other sources just to locate a slide they need information from. But the real value is not only in finding the slide itself. Often there are valuable elements inside, a widget, a chart, or even an idea captured in comments or speaker notes that can be reused, adapted, or rediscovered when someone is working on a new project.

In the case of design teams, up to 20% of a designer’s time is spent simply searching for existing resources instead of building on top of work that has already been done. What made this particularly interesting for us was how frequently this issue kept appearing across different industries. That’s exactly what led to the creation of DeckFinder.

DeckFinder is a web application that allows users to search directly across all of their existing presentations and instantly find the exact slide, visual element, or asset they need.

One of the key advantages of DeckFinder is that it can connect to multiple file management systems. You simply connect it to your company’s file storage, and the tool automatically scans all PowerPoint content. There is no need to manually tag slides or reorganize existing folders. DeckFinder analyzes the content and effectively transforms a company’s presentations into a searchable, reusable knowledge base.

Your best slides already exist. Our job is to find them for you.

Geetesh: Where do you see slide search and presentation asset management evolving over the next five years? And what role would DeckFinder play in this evolution?

Andreja: Today, presentations are still viewed as posters used to convey a one-off message to an audience. What is often overlooked is the fact that a large amount of valuable information remains on those slides. Unfortunately, most of that knowledge stays locked inside presentations and quickly gets forgotten once a project is finished.

This will have to change, and I believe we will see a transition from simple file storage toward intelligent content retrieval.

This transition will be propelled by AI, which will play a significant role in making slide assets more accessible. It will start with ordinary semantic search and smarter content discovery and eventually will evolve into fully automated systems capable of self-management and quality control across the entire company.

I like to think that DeckFinder is the first step toward that future. Its mission is to help organizations unlock the value of the presentation content they already have. By making slides searchable across multiple departments in the company, DeckFinder uncovers a valuable source of information that has often been overlooked.

In the long term, we see DeckFinder evolving into an intelligent layer that connects presentation content with anyone in the organization who needs to read, modify, or share the information and data stored on slides.

Geetesh: Can someone try DeckFinder before buying it? What’s included in the trial experience?

Andreja: Yes, absolutely.

For every new client, we organize an introduction session where we walk users through the main features and settings of DeckFinder. This gives prospective users a clear understanding of what they can expect from the tool.

After the introduction, we usually offer a free 30-day trial. During the trial period, all features of the DeckFinder Pro package are available with no restrictions.

The purpose of the trial is to allow clients to test-drive the tool using their own content and see the impact DeckFinder can have on their daily work.

There is one important detail I am obligated to mention. We know that presentations often contain confidential information, and we care deeply about our clients’ data. Therefore, I want to emphasize that DeckFinder does not copy, store, or redistribute original presentation files when connected to external systems.

The only exception to this rule is the option to upload files manually to internal DeckFinder storage. This feature is intended for individual users who choose the free package and don’t have cloud storage of their own.

Find and reuse any slide or slide element your company ever created – in seconds.
DeckFinder Demo | Your slide search engine

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The Mogul Mind of Michael Jackson: Conversation with Rodney Saulsberry

Geetesh Bajaj — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:00:46 +0000

Rodney Saulsberry is an author, voice actor, singer, and creative strategist with decades of experience across entertainment and media. He is known for his work in animation, film, television, and music, as well as for coaching creatives on career longevity and professional growth. He is also the author of The Mogul Mind of Michael Jackson: How the King of Pop Created His Music and Publishing Empire, part of The Mogul Mind series, which examines how iconic creators turned talent into ownership and long-term influence.

In this conversation, Rodney explains why the principles behind Michael Jackson’s success can resonate far beyond the music industry—even for professionals who create and present ideas.

Geetesh: Rodney, your Mogul Mind series explores how iconic figures moved beyond success to build influence and ownership. What is the central idea behind this series, and why did you choose Michael Jackson as one of the individuals to examine in depth?

Rodney: The central idea behind The Mogul Mind series is to shine a light on personalities in entertainment, business, sports, and social media who moved beyond success and built real influence through ownership. Many of these individuals reached extraordinary financial heights — in some cases hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars — and I wanted to explore the strategies and mindset that helped them get there.

I believe that understanding how these individuals think about business, ownership, and long-term leverage can benefit readers from many different professions. Whether you are a boss or an employee, the concepts used by these successful people can help you become more successful in your own field.

Michael Jackson was actually the first person I thought of when I conceived this series. At one time he owned half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Think about that. In 1985 he purchased ATV Music Publishing for $40 million, and about a decade later he merged it with Sony’s catalog to form Sony/ATV Music Publishing. At that point Michael Jackson was receiving a share of the revenue from one of the most powerful music publishing companies in the world. Who does that? Very few people in entertainment history have ever accomplished something like that.

Geetesh: In The Mogul Mind of Michael Jackson, you show how his understanding of authorship, publishing, and long-term ownership transformed his career. What lessons can presenters and consultants apply from Michael Jackson’s business mindset, when creating and delivering their own ideas and content?

Rodney: I think the biggest takeaway from Michael Jackson’s success was his early understanding that content is king — but ownership of that content is even more important.

If you are a presenter, you should own the content you are presenting. If you are a trainer, you should use content that you own to train others. And if you are a consultant, you should advise the people you consult with to maintain ownership of their intellectual property as well.

For many years — and even after his death — Michael Jackson’s ownership of some of the biggest songs in music history not only cemented his mogul legacy, but it also continues to allow his estate to generate billions for his surviving heirs. That is the power of ownership.

Geetesh: After readers finish this book, what shift in thinking do you hope they experience about success, ownership, and the way they approach their creative or professional work?

Rodney: I hope readers begin thinking like a boss — someone who takes control of their own destiny.

When creators produce work, they should pay very close attention to the contracts they sign. Writers who collaborate with other writers should make sure that the splits are fair. And creators should try as much as possible to maintain ownership of their publishing and intellectual property.

When you look at the two superstars that have been featured so far in my Mogul Mind Series, the common denominator is ownership. Michael Jackson set the precedent decades ago when he acquired half of Sony/ATV Music Publishing. And Taylor Swift later demonstrated that same mogul mindset when she re-recorded her masters, to regain control of her catalog.

These are the attributes of a true mogul mindset, and I look forward to bringing readers more stories of moguls in future books in the series.

Stay tuned.

“The Mogul Mind of Michael Jackson” Available Now on Amazon!.
“The Mogul Mind of Michael Jackson” Available Now on Amazon!

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Slide Generation with TeamSlide: Conversation with Kartik Sundar

Geetesh Bajaj — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:00:02 +0000

Kartik Sundar is the co-founder of Aploris GmbH, the company behind TeamSlide, a PowerPoint-native slide generation and presentation management solution. A former corporate strategy and management consultant, he brings firsthand insight into how high-stakes business presentations are developed and refined within consulting, sales, and executive teams. Today, TeamSlide supports some of the world’s most renowned consulting firms, helping them produce consulting-grade presentations with greater speed and consistency.

In this conversation, Kartik discusses slide generation options within TeamSlide.

Geetesh: What inspired the shift from TeamSlide’s original slide library/search product to building an AI-powered slide generator?

Kartik: We wouldn’t describe it as a shift. It’s an addition.

We started with a simple observation: consultants were wasting enormous amounts of time searching for the right slides, checking versions, and reformatting existing material. Our slide library and search capabilities solved the discovery and reuse problem.

Reusing approved assets is still the most efficient use of time. But often new slides need to be created. LLMs gave us an opportunity to generate new slides very efficiently.

The slide generator was built to extend our mission. The library helps you reuse what exists, generation helps you create what doesn’t, while still staying aligned with the way your organization communicates.

Geetesh: How does slide generation in TeamSlide differ from other AI slide tools in terms of quality, structure, and real-world usability inside PowerPoint?

Kartik: TeamSlide is built for the way consulting and advisory teams actually work in PowerPoint: structured, iterative, and brand-driven.

Dynamic slide structure (AI + deterministic logic)

We can intelligently modify the structure of slides to best tell your story. If you need to convey four key facts instead of three, we automatically extend your approved three-column layout to support four, maintaining alignment, spacing, and hierarchy.

We achieve this by combining AI with deterministic layout and geometry rules. The AI determines what should be said; our layout engine determines how it should be structured on the slide. The result is flexibility without breaking design standards.

Your layouts. Your voice. Not a generic theme.

TeamSlide works directly with your firm’s specific layouts and slide library. That means the output looks like it came from your firm (and not from an AI tool).

Text is guided to match advisory writing standards:

Clear, action-oriented headlines
“So-what” framing
Consistent terminology
Appropriate level of specificity and data density

Built for iteration inside PowerPoint

Advisory work is iterative. You generate a slide, review it with a partner, adjust the story, refine the language, swap a layout, and repeat.

TeamSlide supports that real-world workflow:

Prompt-based editing to refine content or restructure the slide
The ability to switch layouts while preserving the message
Seamless manual edits directly in PowerPoint
Integration with your existing slide library for reuse + generation in one system

We optimize for the generate → refine → align → present cycle that consulting teams live in.

In short, most AI slide tools optimize for a one-shot draft. TeamSlide optimizes for consulting teams, combining AI with deterministic structure, firm-specific layouts, and iterative editing inside PowerPoint, so slides are not just generated, but usable in high-stakes client work.

Geetesh: Can you walk us through the typical workflow you envision for a consultant using the slide generator?

Kartik: The workflow is designed to mirror how consultants already think and work in PowerPoint: structured, hypothesis-driven, and iterative.

1. Start with raw thinking

A consultant begins by pasting rough notes, research snippets, meeting takeaways, or early hypotheses.

These inputs are usually unstructured: fragments of arguments, data points, key facts, or partial storylines.

2. Generate a structured first draft

From there, TeamSlide interprets the intent and organizes the material into a coherent slide. It:

Selects an appropriate firm-approved layout
Restructures the slide as needed (adding steps, columns, rows, or sections)
Rewrites content into consulting-style language with clear, action-oriented headlines

This is where AI and deterministic layout logic work together, ensuring the output is both well-written and structurally sound.

But generation is just the beginning.

3. Iterate like you would with a team

Consulting work is inherently iterative. You rarely get it perfect in one pass.

After the initial slide is created, users can:

Tighten or sharpen the headline
Reframe the message for a different audience
Increase specificity or add data
Change the hierarchy
Modify structure (e.g., expand a 3-column table to 4, simplify a process from 6 steps to 4)

Think of it as collaborating with an assistant that understands both storytelling principles and formatting constraints inside PowerPoint.

Geetesh: How does someone access the AI-powered slide generator? Is there a trial?

Kartik: Individual users can get free access here.

For firms that want to use their own layouts and their specific voice, please reach out via this link. We offer a proof-of-concept for free. Pricing depends on the number of layouts and the number of users.

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The Cyrano Parable

Geetesh Bajaj — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:00:55 +0000

By Jerry Weissman

Ever since its debut in Paris in 1897, Cyrano de Bergerac has been an enormous attraction for audiences and performers. The original French actor, for whom playwright Edmond Rostand created the part, performed it more than 400 times. In the twentieth century, the story went on to be produced as a film twelve times—one of which earned an Academy Award for José Ferrer in 1950, another that starred Steve Martin in 1987, and the most recent starring Peter Dinklage in 2021—and as an opera five times.

Image: AI generated

While the story is based on a real seventeenth century poet and swordsman, it was Mr. Rostand’s nineteenth century interpretation that created its enduring appeal—and serves as a parable for presenters. Briefly stated, Cyrano is the story of a man who was considered ugly because of his very large nose, but who more than compensated for his looks with a rare gift for language. In a tale of romance by proxy, Cyrano helps a handsome but inarticulate man win over a beautiful woman by writing love letters for him and by speaking for him at a masquerade ball, almost as a ventriloquist.

The Cyrano Parable is a testament to the power of substance over style and the vital importance of the story. It is also an analog for the primacy of the presenter’s narrative over the slide show. This hierarchy is supported and promoted by a cottage industry of presentation consultants, authors, coaches, designers, websites, and organizations. I heard many of them reinforce this approach as a virtual mantra at Rick Altman’s Presentation Summit, an annual industry conference for graphics professionals.

Nevertheless, their clients and my clients—businesspeople all over the world—continue to ignore the advice and follow the opposite approach of having their slides tell their stories. While this practice produces a never-ending deal flow for consultants and coaches, it rarely produces successful presentations for presenters. Heed the advice of presentation professionals; keep your slides simple and tell your own story.

Be like Cyrano: focus on telling a compelling tale, rather than focus on your appearance or that of your slides. You are not a ventriloquist and your slide deck is not your dummy.

This blog is an excerpt from my book Winning Strategies for Power Presentations, published by Pearson. Also, check out my newly released Presentation Trilogy—Presenting to Win, The Power Presenter, and In the Line of Fire—available on Amazon and other retailers.

Jerry Weissman is the founder and president of Suasive, Inc., formerly Power Presentations, Ltd. Jerry founded Suasive in 1988 and quickly established himself as the coach for Silicon Valley CEOs delivering critical presentations for their IPO roadshows. He taught them to tell their company stories through the eyes of their investors, and in so doing, significantly increased the valuations of their companies. He amassed an elite client list and soon widened his focus to helping public and privately held companies develop and deliver all types of business presentations.

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