Top PowerPoint add-ins for consultants feature review

The PPT Productivity team know a lot about PowerPoint!  Our team are former management consultants from BCG and Accenture.  Between us we have more than 50 years experience developing PowerPoint presentations. 

This article provides a feature comparison table for PowerPoint add-ins ( aka PowerPoint Plugins ).  We have focused on reviewing PowerPoint addins with features related to formatting, alignment and reuse, because these are the features that strategy consultants and other professionals tend to look for when researching PowerPoint add-ins.  

What are PowerPoint add-ins?

There are varying terms for them but PowerPoint add-ins = software that adds custom commands or custom features to PowerPoint. The terms PowerPoint Plugins or PowerPoint Toolbars are also used. PowerPoint add-ins can help you craft and refine your slides faster and some can also make reuse and collaboration easier.

What kind of features do PowerPoint add-ins offer?

PowerPoint add-ins offer a variety of features, which is why we have specifically focused on Consulting PowerPoint add-ins for this review.  PowerPoint add-ins for consultants focus on time saving features that are relevant when you are putting more detail into a PowerPoint presentation. Consultants typically use PowerPoint to create reports and other deliverables for their clients which can be one hundred or more pages in length.

Here are the feature groupings that we used to help compare consulting relevant features across the PowerPoint add-ins included in this review.

PowerPoint Slide Library

Does the add-in have the ability to save PowerPoint slides and/ or slide objects (e.g. shapes, images, logos) for fast and easy reuse?  Slide Libraries for PowerPoint features are also sometimes called Slide Repositories or Slide Banks.

Color Palette

Does the PowerPoint add-in have a feature to display the color palette of your PowerPoint template and/ or custom color palettes for easy access? Color Palettes features might also be called Color Toolbars or Color Managers.

Charts features for PowerPoint

Does the add-in have features to insert and update charts in PowerPoint and to refine the formatting of the chart?  Links back to source data in Excel is also a feature considered as part of Charts features.

Formatting Features

PowerPoint formatting features are popular across most PowerPoint add-ins.  Formatting features can include alignment of shapes, text and other objects (e.g. make shapes same height and width, etc), resizing, aligning, locking shapes, adding Harvey balls, and much more. Formatting features is a broad feature group, but they all focus on helping users to save time polishing slides.

Slide Managing features

Does the PowerPoint add-in have features for managing slides, including features such as slide navigators, email selected PowerPoint slides, save selected slides as new PowerPoint presentation, slide layouts and boundaries, slide numbering and totals and more.

Wizard features

PowerPoint Wizard features are a mixed group which aim to streamline bigger tasks.  In the PowerPoint wizards feature group we have included formatting wizards, agenda tools, tombstone generators, maps features, slide masters, and painters that copy/ paste attributes rather than just shapes (e.g. PowerPoint table format painter, location painters, etc).

PowerPoint Table features

Table features all focus on adding or formatting tables in PowerPoint.  Features include autofitting column width to content, aligning shapes over table rows, converting tables to text boxes or text boxes to tables, managing table cell margins and pasting table data from Excel but without the excel formatting (so the table data inherits your PowerPoint slide formatting).

Text features

Text features include paragraph styles for PowerPoint, alignment, merging and splitting text boxes, replacing or deleting all text on a slide or across a presentation, updating the proofing language and autofitting/ resizing.

Templates features

Templates features include managing/ setting default templates in PowerPoint - for example making your preferred template load when you open PowerPoint.

Proofing / check features

Proofing features include reviewing PowerPoint presentations for consistency of fonts and colors used, the proofing language, checking for unused slide layouts, alignment of objects within slide boundaries and more.

Translation

Translation features in PowerPoint add-ins include the ability to translate text in the presentation to a different language.

Free Trial Options

Most PowerPoint add-ins offer a free trial which is a great opportunity for you to test out the features before you commit to purchase. Make the most of free trials by exploring as many features as you can and testing them on your presentation templates.

Which PowerPoint add ins did we review?

Following is a list of PowerPoint add ins which have features relevant to consulting and that have been in the market for a number of years. If you think we have missed anything, please contact us. Mostly they are in Alphabetical order, but we started with the one we know best....

PPT Productivity

PPT Productivity was created by a team of BCG and Accenture alumni with a lot of input from McKinsey and Bain alums. Features are focused on helping consultants to save time and include formatting features, extra PowerPoint shortcut keys, Slide Library, Color Toolbar, Agenda Wizard, Proofing Tools and more.

Brightslide

Brightslide was created by the Bright Carbon team and offers a range of features for formatting. The Bright Carbon folks are a Graphic Design shop so they also have animation features. It is a free product, but the installer is a .ppam file which is likely to be a problem for consultants working in large banks, investment banks and pharmaceutical companies in particular (read below to understand why .ppam files are something you need to be aware of).

Efficient Elements

Created by a team of German consultants, Efficient Elements aims to help its users save time creating professional presentations. Their features are focused around Formatting, and they have an Agenda Wizard and Slide Library.

Empower

Empower is also a German company, which focuses on professional presentations. Empowersuite has a PowerPoint add-in as a part of their Office 365 suite which includes features for Excel, PowerPoint and Word.

Macabacus

Macabacus is a US based company with a focused on features for financial services industry, including Private Equity, Investments, etc. Macabacus have features for Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Their PowerPoint features are focused on Excel linking, Agendas and formatting.

MLC

MLC is an Italian based firm. Their PowerPoint addin is also focused around productivity. Their features include Formatting, Alignment and Slide Library.

Poweruser

A French based company, Poweruser is focused on editable templates, along with some Agenda, formatting and alignment features. They also have some Excel and Word features.

PowerPointLabs

PowerPointLabs PowerPoint add-in is produced by the National University of Singapore under an open source arrangement. The focus is on refining presentations with features around alignment, animations, and narration.

Slidehub

Slidehub is Denmark based with features focused on the Slide Library/ asset space. The Slidehub addin also has features for Word, Excel and Outlook.

Slidewise

Slidewise is UK based. The Slidewise add-in is focused on Quality Review/ Proofing features, including finding issues with fonts, file sizes, colors, etc. They do not have a Slide Library, Agenda tool or formatting features.

Teamslide

Teamslide is based in Germany. The Teamsli.de add-in features are focused on a Slide Library to host and share slides and elements, but they do not have text, table or formatting features or proofing features.

Templafy

Templafy has a PowerPoint addin as part of what they call a content enablement platform to create brand aligned documents and templates. More focused on enterprise content management and templates, they have features across PowerPoint, Excel and Word (noting that Templafy target large organizations, we do not believe it is possible to purchase single license keys).

Think-cell

Think-cell focuses on PowerPoint chart features and making charts work with connectivity between PowerPoint and Excel. They also have some PowerPoint specific features including Agenda features.

PowerPoint addins Feature Comparison Table

We have collated a feature review of the addins from each of the companies listed above into a table. The table provides a list of the PowerPoint add-ins and the feature groups offered by each. Harvey Balls have been used to denote whether each PowerPoint add-in has all, some or none of each feature group described above.

From the feature comparison table, we calculated the scores and produced a table that compares PPT Productivity with the other PowerPoint add-ins for consultants.

Please contact us to book in a walkthrough of PPT Productivity. We can also provide you with a copy of the PowerPoint add-in comparison table.

What else to consider when choosing a PowerPoint add in?

PowerPoint add-in Security

It’s critical to consider the security policy of your organization and how the PowerPoint add-in works.

For example -any PowerPoint add-in that offers a hosted cloud-based library feature is most likely hosting your presentation files outside your organization’s IT stack.  Check this carefully and make sure you understand the hosting arrangement. This is a risk because you may end up saving client related information in your library and choosing to use such an add-in without approval from your organization may be in breach of your companies IT policy.

PPT Productivity is specifically designed to store your presentation files only locally on your machine or your nominated company share drive (for example your company OneDrive).   This ensures your organization retains all presentation files and data within your company’s IT stack.

PPAMs are blocked by default by PowerPoint due to security risks

Most "free" PowerPoint add-ins are .ppam files.  Microsoft Office blocks PPAM file types by default - they provide a more detailed explanation of why here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/security/internet-macros-blocked. Large organizations typically seek to block use of PPAM files for the same reason - for example this guide from the UK government regarding the risks https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/macro-security-for-microsoft-office.

This is because many are used used for malicious purposes, so most organizations block .ppam files due to this security risk.  Note - it does not mean that all .ppam files are bad, it just means they are viewed by IT security as a high risk file type due to the potential for exploitation.

Digitally signed COM PowerPoint add-ins are a safer choice 

It’s very important to choose a PowerPoint add-in that is digitally signed by the publisher. COM add-ins are safer than PPAM addins.

PPT Productivity is an example of a COM add-in, and PPT Productivity’s installation program is 'digitally shrink-wrapped' using a signature. What does this mean?  Before your computer downloads a file, it first checks the file hasn't been tampered with since it was originally uploaded.  It does this by checking the file has been signed by a trusted third-party.  PPT Productivity PowerPoint add-in uses a signature to ensure the installation program you run is the one intended for you by the software developer.

We hope this feature comparison has helped you to understand more about consulting add-ins that are available. Remember to check out PPT Productivity's PowerPoint add-in for consultants free trial.