January 2023 Update: Agenda Wizard, Format Painters + More

PPT Productivity is rolling out a new version progressively during January and February 2023 to free trial and paid users of Power Tools.  This update of PPT Productivity Power Tools includes a lot of new features, including the long awaited PowerPoint Agenda Wizard. Read on for a quick overview.

All users should receive this new version by the end of February 2023. However if you are using an enterprise or large team license managed centrally by your organization's IT team, there may be a delay in you receiving the update.

New PPT Productivity Features in January 2023

Agenda Wizard makes Agendas in PowerPoint easy

Meet the Agenda Wizard for PowerPoint! Quickly create Agenda or Table of Contents slides with slide numbers, sync updates to your Agendas in a single click after rearranging your content slides, quickly add optional divider slides aka flysheets. Save Agenda format layouts for fast reuse or select from options provided. PPT Productivity's Agenda Wizard has been in development for quite some time, but we think it's been worth the wait - Agendas in PowerPoint have never been easier.

Format Painters to speed up PowerPoint formatting

There are now multiple Format Painter buttons on the PPT Productivity Format Toolbar. These features let you quickly copy and paste selected formatting. Choose from an enhanced Format Painter called the Style Painter, a Table Format Painter, Text Painter, Animation Painter, Style Painter and Shape Change Painter. Plus there's an Advanced Format Painter that lets you specify elements to copy and paint (eg text and fill color but not outline color, or table formatting plus table position and size).

Straighten Lines quickly via new feature buttons

The time saving straighten lines features on the PPT Productivity Format Toolbar do exactly what they say! Click a crooked line in your presentation and then select either straighten horizontal line or straighten vertical line. You can straighten multiple lines at once, including lines across slides.

Group objects by Row or Group by Column

The group by row and group by column features let you quickly group objects on your slide to make formatting easier. These features were requested by McKinsey alumni, for working with box tables.

Split Join Textboxes and Shapes

The new Split Join shapes feature lets you either select a single textbox and split it into multiple boxes (the boxes will split at carriage returns), or select multiple text boxes to merge. Together these features provide a Split Join option. This great timesaver means you can enter all text into a single textbox, then click split textboxes to separate them out for formatting.

Delete Text or Replace

PPT Productivity had an existing Delete text feature which we have enhanced to include a Replace text option. Replace Text is great when you want to preserve the formatting of your slide, but remove the wording. Nominate to replace text with a character - for example convert text to dots. Perfect for cleaning up slides that you want to reuse for the layout.

Fit text to textboxes

Three timesaving buttons to format textboxes in PowerPoint - quickly click these buttons to Turn off Autofit and prevent the text resizing to suit the textbox size; Shrink text to fit size so text fits within the textbox; or Resize shape to fit text - grow or shrink the textbox, depending on the content.

Navigate through deck

The Slide Navigator makes it easy to quickly skip to a specific slide in your PowerPoint presentation and to quickly navigate back and forth between slides at different points in the deck. Use these back and forward arrows to switch between specific slides (like a web browser). Eg navigate to slide 23 and then slide 56, then move quickly back and forth between them by pressing the forward and backward arrows.

Move to Multiple Slides

The Move to Multiple Slides feature separates out selected objects on your PowerPoint slide, placing each one centred on a separate slide (adding extra slides to your presentation). Perfect when you have pasted a group of icons or images to a slide and need to separate them.

Recolor Charts with the Color Toolbar

You can now Recolor Charts using the Color Toolbar, making it easy to update Charts and apply custom colors. Simply select the chart element(s) to recolor and select your preferred colors from the PPT Productivity Color Toolbar.