ABC's of PowerPoint 2007

19. Customize the Quick Access Toolbar

Customizing your quick access toolbar will help increase your productivity, and more importantly will open up many of PowerPoint's built-in capabilities; many of which you may not have realized existed.

Customize the Toolbar:
To access the toolbar customization options, click the windows icon. On the bottom of the drop down menu that appears, There is a "PowerPoint Options" button. Click that to open the "PowerPoint Options" window, then click the "Customize" button in that window.

There are two drop down menus, each with a list under them. The first drop down menu has locations from where you may choose commands to add. You may choose from Popular Commands, Commands Not in Ribbon, and many others. Below that drop down menu is a list of commands available in the selection you have made. The second drop down menu allows you to choose whether these commands will become default commands for every PowerPoint document you work on, or only for the current document. Under that is a list of the commands that have already been added to the Quick Access Toolbar. To add commands, find them on the first list, click on them once to select them, then click the "Add>>" button between the lists to add them. Conversly, you may select a command on the second list, click the "Remove" button, and it will be removed from the Quick Access Toolbar.

When you are finished adding commande, click "OK", and they will be added to the Quick Access Menu, which is located at the very top of your screen, right next to the windows icon.

As a final word: My favorite commands include the all of the alignments, both send to front and back, and the entire grouping series. However the 2 eye-droppers (Pick Up Object Style & Apply to Defaults) top my list. For an explanation on how the eye-droppers will benefit you see Tip 2.

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