Take a glance at some of those shortcuts below for common formatting, editing, and file and document tasks. Additionally, after you’ve created your masterpiece, you can use a number of shortcuts when running your slideshow.
PowerPoint 2021 formatting shortcuts
If you’re ready to format text in PowerPoint 2021, this table gets you on the road toward ooohs and aaahs of doing so. If you use PowerPoint templates as the basis for your presentations, your text is already formatted acceptably. To really pull out the pyrotechnic stops, however, you have to know a few basic formatting tricks.
| Command | Shortcut | Ribbon Location |
| Bold | Ctrl+B | Home tab, Font group |
| Italic | Ctrl+I | Home tab, Font group |
| Underline | Ctrl+U | Home tab, Font group |
| Center | Ctrl+E | Home tab, Paragraph group |
| Left Align | Ctrl+L | Home tab, Paragraph group |
| Right Align | Ctrl+R | Home tab, Paragraph group |
| Justify | Ctrl+J | Home tab, Paragraph group |
| Normal | Ctrl+spacebar | Home tab, Paragraph group |
PowerPoint 2021 editing shortcuts
Like any good Windows program, PowerPoint 2021 uses the standard Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, Find, and Replace commands. These commands work on text that you’ve selected; if you’ve selected an entire object, the commands work on the object itself. In other words, you can use these commands with bits of text or with entire objects.
| Command | Shortcut | Ribbon Location |
| Undo | Ctrl+Z | Quick Access Toolbar |
| Cut | Ctrl+X | Home tab, Clipboard group |
| Copy | Ctrl+C | Home tab, Clipboard group |
| Paste | Ctrl+V | Home tab, Clipboard group |
| Select All | Ctrl+A | Home tab, Editing group |
| Find | Ctrl+F | Home tab, Editing group |
| Replace | Ctrl+H | Home tab, Editing group |
PowerPoint 2021 file and document shortcuts
You can do a lot with PowerPoint 2021, and having shortcuts for the things you do most often is very handy.
Some of the things you’ll frequently do in PowerPoint include creating, saving, and printing new presentations, as well as opening existing presentations, adding new slides, and getting help from PowerPoint.
The following table tells you the shortcuts for these common actions.
| Command | Shortcut | Ribbon Location |
| New | Ctrl+N | File tab, New command |
| Open | Ctrl+O | File tab, Open command |
| Save | Ctrl+S | File tab, Save command |
| Ctrl+P | File tab, Print command | |
| Help | F1 | Help button at upper right of Ribbon |
| New Slide | Ctrl+M | Home tab, New Slide command |
PowerPoint 2021 slideshow shortcuts
PowerPoint 2021 is designed to create slides that are presented directly on a screen rather than printed out. The screen can be your computer’s own monitor, a projector, or an external monitor, such as a giant-screen TV.
In most cases, the default settings for showing a presentation are adequate. However, in some cases, you may want to take control and run the slideshow yourself.
The following table lists the shortcuts you’ll most often use when running a slideshow.
| To Do This . . . | Use This . . . |
| Start a slideshow | F5 |
| Advance to the next slide | N |
| Perform the next animation | Enter, Page Down, right arrow, down arrow, or spacebar |
| Go back to the previous slide | P |
| Repeat the previous animation | Page Up, left arrow, up arrow, or Backspace |
| Go to a specific slide | Type the slide number and then press Enter |
| Display a black screen | B |
| Display a white screen | W |
| End a slideshow | Esc |
| Go to the next hidden slide | H |
| Display a pen cursor | Ctrl+P |
| Display an arrow cursor | Ctrl+A |
| Hide the cursor | Ctrl+H |