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About this lesson
Reuse existing slides from another presentation, and retain the theme of that presentation if you wish.
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Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Reusing and Copying Slides.pptx291.3 KB Reusing and Copying Slides - Solution.pptx
2.1 MB
Quick reference
Reusing and Copying Slides
Reusing slides – to save time.
When to use
When you have pre-existing slides that can be easily used again.
Instructions
- On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the arrow below the New Slide button and click Reuse Slides.
- You have these options:
- Browse to a slide library – which is sometimes available in a corporate environment and will need to be installed by IT staff.
- Browse to a file – the method used in the remainder of this cheat sheet.
- Browse to a file and in the dialogue box, select a presentation, and click Open.
- Various slides appear in the Reuse Slides pane.
- When you right-click a thumbnail, these options become available:
- Insert Slide – inserts the selected slide into the active presentation and the slide adopts the theme of the active presentation.
- Insert All Slides – inserts all slides into the active presentation and all slides adopt the theme of the active presentation.
- Apply Theme to All Slides – applies the theme of the selected slide to all slides in the active presentation. No slides are inserted.
- Apply Theme to Selected Slides – applies the theme of the selected slide to the selected slides in the active presentation. No slides are inserted.
Also note:
In general, it’s poor practice to reuse slides instead of properly constructing a storyboard and creating a presentation.
Any thumbnail that you click in the Reuse Slides pane will immediately be inserted into the presentation after the current slide selected.
- 00:05 This video covers the Reuse Slides feature in PowerPoint, and it'll save you so
- 00:09 much time by not having to recreate your slides numerous times.
- 00:13 But please don't ever use this as the first option or
- 00:15 the method to create your presentation.
- 00:18 You should create an outline of the presentation from a storyboard.
- 00:21 And then consider which slides you can reuse from other presentations.
- 00:25 So let's begin.
- 00:27 I'm in the process of constructing a presentation for a conference shortly.
- 00:31 And I'd like to reuse some slides that I used last time.
- 00:35 So within PowerPoint I've got my target presentation open, and
- 00:38 a few slides that are already constructed.
- 00:41 I click the little drop down arrow on the New Slide button,
- 00:45 then click the Reuse Slides menu item.
- 00:48 And we get the Reuse Slides task pane.
- 00:50 We could browse to the file and
- 00:52 this brings up a dialogue box that we can use to find the particular presentation.
- 00:58 And this is the method that we will use in the remainder of this video.
- 01:01 So we browse for the location of the file on the computer, select it, and
- 01:06 click the Open button.
- 01:08 And there's the selected file now opened in the reuse slides task pane,
- 01:13 and it displays individual slide previews.
- 01:17 As well as their slide titles if they are, in fact, entered.
- 01:21 Now it's important to remember that slides will be inserted after the selected slide
- 01:26 in the active presentation.
- 01:28 And you need to be a bit careful here because any slide that you click on
- 01:31 here will immediately be placed in the presentation.
- 01:34 So let's have a look at our options.
- 01:36 First, right click insert slide.
- 01:40 So this inserts the slide that you select into the active presentation and
- 01:44 the slide will use the theme of the active presentation.
- 01:48 Control Z to undo that.
- 01:51 Insert All Slides, inserts all slides here into the active presentation and
- 01:55 again the slides use the theme of the active presentation.
- 01:59 Control Z to undo again, apply thin tall slides.
- 02:03 This option will apply that theme of the selected slide to all
- 02:08 slides in the active presentation, but no actual slides are inserted.
- 02:12 And so undo that.
- 02:15 Apply theme to selected slides.
- 02:18 So this option will apply the theme of the selected slide here to the selected
- 02:22 slides.
- 02:23 In the active presentation, and no actual slides are inserted.
- 02:27 So again, you would need to work out which slides you wish to apply that to,
- 02:31 and select them.
- 02:31 And if no slide is selected, it will apply formatting to the current active slide.
- 02:38 Now the slides that I'd like to select in the Reuse Slides task pane
- 02:42 are the last three.
- 02:43 And I'd like to insert them after slide 2 in my active presentation.
- 02:48 But I also need to keep the source formatting.
- 02:52 So first I select the slide in the active presentation that I'd like to insert
- 02:57 the slides after which is slide 2.
- 02:59 I click the check box to keep the source formatting and
- 03:02 then I need to decide which method I'll use to insert the slides.
- 03:05 If I right-click and select insert all slides, I will get all of the slides and
- 03:10 I could do that and then simply delete the ones later on that I don't want, but
- 03:15 that's not really suitable if you've got dozens of slides in a presentation.
- 03:20 But it's just as easy to click on the various slides that I need and then they
- 03:24 will be inserted into the presentation and the source formatting is kept.
- 03:28 Now finally another easy option, let's just open that presentation in PowerPoint,
- 03:32 so I browse to it and select the file.
- 03:35 Now we go to the view tab on the ribbon,
- 03:37 now I've actually got two presentations only.
- 03:40 But you can only see one at a time.
- 03:42 So when I click the arrange all button,
- 03:44 suddenly we've got both presentations side by side.
- 03:47 And we can simply drag across,
- 03:49 and drop from our source presentation into the target.
- 03:51 We select the little smart tag drop down button to keep the source formatting or
- 03:55 we can use the destination theme.
- 03:57 It's very simple.
- 03:58 And it works with copy and paste as well, and that's the subject of other videos.
- 04:02 So remember the PowerPoint feature to re-use your slides,
- 04:05 it will save time and effort.
- 04:06 But you can also copy and paste out of another presentation, or drag and drop.
- 04:10 But re-use slides is a very good method as well,
- 04:12 particularly when you've got a thumbnail of all of the slides.
- 04:15 And you can transfer across the formatting very easily as well.
- 04:19 But please don't ever use this feature just as a method to construct your
- 04:22 presentation from scratch.
- 04:24 Always build a presentation from a storyboard and
- 04:27 use the outline feature and that's covered in other videos.
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