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About this lesson

When you work extensively on a chart, picture or slide and it doesn’t turn out exactly how you wish, quickly reset it back to what it was originally.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2010, 2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Reset, the Magic Button.pptx
3.9 MB Reset, the Magic Button - Complete.pptx
4.5 MB

Quick reference

Topic

Resetting various types of object back to their original format.

When to use

To reset objects even when no undo option is available.

Instructions

  • To reset the picture select the picture, click the Format tab, and then click the Reset Picture drop-down arrow.
  • To reset a SmartArt, select the SmartArt, click the Design tab, and then click Reset Graphic.
  • To reset a Placeholder within a Layout, right-click the slide and select Reset Slide.
  • To reset a Slide Background, right-click the slide, select Format Background, and then click Reset Background in the dialog box.
  • To reset the video, select the video, click the Format tab, and then click the Reset Design drop-down arrow.

Also note:

To reset changed theme colors within the Theme Color dialog box, click Reset.

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  • 00:03 This video is titled reset, the magic button, and it’s not just about CTRL Z which is the keyboard shortcut for undo, because undo’s a very linear
  • 00:14 process. You do something and then you do a second thing and a third thing and so on and then when you undo you go back from the third
  • 00:21 thing to the second and undo again and keep going backwards until you run out of undos. But sometimes you go down a particular path in a
  • 00:28 presentation such as formatting images and you think to yourself, it didn’t really work out as I intended, but I can’t undo all that information
  • 00:37 because it doesn’t work, I’ve been somewhere else and come back. But I don’t want to close down the presentation either and lose all the
  • 00:45 information that I’ve worked on. So in this video we will learn about resetting many things as it applies to PowerPoint. So, for example, here is
  • 00:54 a picture that I added to the slide and it already contains a range of formatting effects such as a frame, a correction, color, and an artistic effect,
  • 01:05 and you can open that presentation later and view the effects that are applied to that image. But if I go somewhere else in the presentation
  • 01:12 and come back, fixing this is not part of the undo sequence. So let’s go reset picture, we can either drop the little arrow down and go
  • 01:22 reset the picture and size or just reset the picture, and there it is back to its original state to start again. So let’s move to the next slide
  • 01:31 and look at SmartArt. I can change the shape fill to red and, looking at the chart, I’ve added a 3D bevel, which looks horrible and so I click on the
  • 01:42 SmartArt and then the design tab and click on reset the graphic and there is back to its original format. For the chart, we click reset to match
  • 01:53 the style and the chart is back to its particular format. And with reset you can do it in any particular order, not just in the order we originally
  • 02:05 did it. So placeholders in layouts are the subjects of another video where we go into more detail about them, but the picture on the slide
  • 02:14 has been rotated and moved away from its original location. I just right click, reset slide, and the picture’s back to its original location. If I
  • 02:24 delete the picture, you can see the placeholder and I go CTRL Z which is the keyboard shortcut for undo, and that picture is back on our slide.
  • 02:31 So undo is appropriate for many of the actions we do in PowerPoint, but not if we go way and come back and want to fix something. On the
  • 02:39 next slide I’ve added a little hatch formatting to the slide background; it looks quite horrible against the blue. So in this case it’s not a case
  • 02:47 of just simply resetting the slide because that will change the placeholder but not the background. So I right click on the slide and
  • 02:54 select format background,reset background and now the slide’s back to its original state. Video. Here we have a simple video where the images
  • 03:04 rotate, but a grey color has been applied to it and it looks quite horrible so we select the video and go either reset the design and the size but
  • 03:14 I’ll just reset the design and now it’s back to how it was originally exported out of PowerPoint ready to start formatting again. A very important
  • 03:23 note, if you compress your presentation you may not be able to reset some images and if you optimize media, such as videos, the reset
  • 03:31 options may not work. We’ll also look at theme colors but it’s more about the dialog box where you change those colors rather than the themes
  • 03:39 colors on the slide. So on the design tab, colors, I’ve got a particular color set applied but then I decide to customize it. As I change the
  • 03:51 various colors, it may all start to look awry so I click reset and go back to what it was before we started and then we can make a decision about
  • 03:59 whether we want to save this or cancel it, but note this feature works a bit more like undo in that you cannot undo anymore resets once you
  • 04:07 go out of this dialog box. So again, the video is about reset, the magic button. Keep an eye out for it because it will save you so much time. The
  • 04:18 really cool thing it that it even works if you save your presentation and close it and reopen it again. It’s a feature well worth your time
  • 04:25 understanding and using.

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