20 PowerPoint shortcuts every consultant must know

It's no secret that most Management consultants spend a disproportionate amount of time building slides in PowerPoint - especially in their early careers. 

Under tight deadlines, consultants at firms like Bain, McKinsey, and BCG are expected to find ways to produce polished and well-structured slides in minutes. Consequently, and rightly so, many consultants are obsessed with PowerPoint speed and efficiency. 

We have asked a group of ex-colleagues from BCG, Bain and McKinsey which PowerPoint shortcuts they can’t live without. 20 shortcuts stood out from this survey, and these are the topics of this post. Individually, each shortcut might seem trivial, saving you only a few seconds. But use them repeatedly, and those seconds add up. Over time, this will save you hours, making your work noticeably more efficient.
 

How to improve PowerPoint speed and efficiency? 

Based on our experience, there are four groups of tools that can drastically improve the quality and speed of your slide-making process:

1. Templates: Have access to a high-end library of slide templates to copy-paste from (ideally containing both slide layouts, storylines, and real-life project examples).
    
2. Charting and layout add-ins: PowerPoint add-ins like Thinkcell (used by BCG and Oliver Wyman) and Ampler are widely used across consulting firms. They are pricey but very helpful, especially if your whole team uses them.
    
3. Quick Access Toolbar: Customize your toolbar with PowerPoint commands that you use often but are also a bit tricky to access with the mouse.
    
4. PowerPoint shortcuts: Mouse and keyboard shortcuts to speed up various tasks when working in PowerPoint.

This post will focus on the last point: PowerPoint Shortcuts. We’ve categorized our top shortcuts based on the modifier keys—SHIFT, CTRL, and ALT—to make them easier to learn and apply. 

SHIFT shortcuts

'SHIFT' key shortcuts in PowerPoint are essential for precisely manipulating shapes and objects. These shortcuts will transform your slides from a messy jumble into a tight and visually appealing presentation.
 

Constrained Movement

SHIFT + Click and Drag an Object: Holding 'SHIFT' while moving an object constrains its movement horizontally or vertically, maintaining alignment with its original position.

Maintain Shape Proportions

SHIFT + Draw a Shape: When drawing a shape while holding 'SHIFT', the shape maintains a 1:1 aspect ratio. This means you'll create perfect squares instead of rectangles and perfect circles instead of ovals. Similarly, resizing a shape while holding 'SHIFT' preserves its original proportions.

Draw Straight Lines

SHIFT + Draw a Line: Holding 'SHIFT' while drawing a line restricts it to specific angles, such as 0°, 45°, or 90°, ensuring your lines are perfectly horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

Snap Rotate in Increments

SHIFT + Rotate an Object: Rotating an object while holding 'SHIFT' snaps the rotation to 15-degree increments. This helps you achieve precise angles and ensures consistency across your slides.

CTRL shortcuts 

One often overlooked advantage of CTRL shortcuts is that most of them can be executed using just your left hand, allowing your right hand to stay on the mouse. This minimizes unnecessary movements between the keyboard and mouse, streamlining your workflow. Plus, since most people are already familiar with basic copy-paste commands like CTRL+C and CTRL+V, the CTRL muscle memory is already built-in, making these shortcuts easier to adopt.

Quick Duplicate and Move

CTRL + Click and Drag a Shape: Use this shortcut to duplicate a selected shape and drag it anywhere on the slide. It's a game-changer because it lets you copy, paste, and position a shape all in one motion.

Duplicate with Alignment

CTRL + SHIFT + Click and Drag a Shape: Adding 'SHIFT' to the previous shortcut allows you to duplicate a shape and move it along the same horizontal or vertical axis as the original, maintaining alignment.

Copy formatting

CTRL + SHIFT + C and CTRL + SHIFT + V: These shortcuts let you copy and paste the formatting of a shape or text. This is incredibly useful when adding new elements to your slide and you want them to match existing formatting. It's much faster than using the Format Painter tool from the Home tab. Plus, it's an easy shortcut to learn since you're probably already used to 'CTRL + C' and 'CTRL + V'; just add 'SHIFT'!

Select All Text in Object

CTRL + A: Use this to select all text within an object when you want to apply formatting changes or replace the text entirely. While it's less common to use 'CTRL + A' to select all objects on a slide, it can be handy when you need to adjust the formatting or position of every element.

Repeat Last Action

CTRL + Y: This shortcut repeats the last action you performed. It's especially useful for repeating time-consuming tasks like adjusting bullet indents and spacing in multiple text boxes.

Paste Text Without Formatting

CTRL + SHIFT + V: Use this combination to paste text without its original formatting. This is helpful when copying text from a website or another presentation and you don't want the formatting to affect your slide's design.

Group Objects

CTRL + G: Group selected objects so you can move or duplicate them as a single unit while preserving their relative positions. For example, if you have two shapes that you want to align to the center of the slide but keep their spacing consistent, group them first and then align them. To ungroup the shapes, use CTRL + SHIFT + G.

Paragraph Alignment 

PowerPoint provides handy shortcuts to quickly align your paragraphs without interrupting your workflow.

Align Left (Ctrl + L)
Center Align (Ctrl + E)
Align Right (Ctrl + R)

Font Size Adjustment

Quickly increase the font size of your text by hitting Ctrl + Shift + > and decrease your font size by hitting Ctrl + Shift + <
This isn't the only shortcut to changing your font size, but it's the most intuitive.

Nudge objects

The "nudge" feature in Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to move selected objects—such as shapes, images, or text boxes—slightly in any direction using keyboard shortcuts. This is especially useful for precise placement when fine-tuning the layout of your slides. Holding down the Ctrl key will move the object in smaller increments, and holding down the Shift key while pressing the arrow keys moves the object in larger increments.

ALT shortcuts

A common trick is to use ALT shortcuts exclusively to access the tools in your Quick Access Toolbar. ALT + (any number) activates the tool in that number's position on your toolbar. Most people only use the shortcuts for the first 3-5 positions for two reasons: 1) There is a limit to how many you can effectively remember, and 2) the first five number keys can be reached with one (left) hand.

Align objects

It is up to you to decide what tools to place in your Quick Access Toolbar, but it makes sense to include commands that you use often but are also a bit tricky to access with the mouse. Many consultants like placing the Align Objects tool in the first position of the Quick Access Toolbar. If you do this, you can type ALT + 1, then L to align left, ALT + 1, then R to align right, ALT + 1, then T to align top, etc.

Bring to front and Bring to back are also often used and nice to have as ALT + shortcut.

Bonus shortcuts

Lastly, here are two quick bonus shortcuts. They will not help you be more efficient, but they will make you look like a PowerPoint wizard when presenting.
 

Go to specific slide

Type Slide Number + Enter (during presentation): Jump to a specific slide number during a presentation by typing the slide number and pressing Enter. This is useful for quickly navigating large presentations.
Pro tip: Memorize key slide numbers for smooth transitions during Q&A sessions.
 

Black / White Screen

Make the screen go black (B) or white (W) during a presentation to draw attention away from the screen. Press any key to return to the presentation. Use this to focus the audience's attention on you instead of the slide.
 

Final thoughts

If you find yourself spending hours building presentations every week, learning even just a few of these shortcuts can save you a lot of time.

The hard part will be forcing yourself to use shortcuts so they can become reflexes. It'll slow you down at the beginning, but the time saved in the long run will far outweigh the initial annoyance.
 

If you enjoyed this post, you should check out our growing library of slide templates created by former Mckinsey, BCG, and Bain management consultants.