July 2022 Update: Stretch & fill, align shapes on tables + more

Version 3.1.0.9382 released July 29th, 2022 to new free trial users and progressively rolled out during August 2022 to existing users.  Note that if you have an enterprise or large team license managed centrally by your IT team, there may be a delay in you receiving this update. Please contact us if you cannot see the new features by mid August.

This update of PPT Productivity Power Tools includes new features as well as some tune ups of existing features. Read on for a quick overview!

New PPT Productivity Features in July 2022

You can now align shapes over a table

Align shapes over the table(s) on a slide, or select a subset of shape to arrange in a row or column! Select shapes on your slide and click to align them over your PowerPoint table.

Shapes are automatically aligned to the centre of table cells.  You don't even need to select the table - the feature identifies the table on your slide and auto aligns shapes to the centre of cells, based on your selection of a row, a column or the entire table.

Stretch shapes to match end points and fill gaps between shapes

Stretch shapes the the inner or outer boundary of the first select shape. The Stretch shapes and fill gaps features were requested by quite few BCG alums in particular.

Enhanced Features in July 2022

Automatically set 'No Fly Zone' + add Guides to show Slide Master text boundary

We've enhanced the No Fly Zone (NFZ) feature. You can now automatically align shapes to the text boundary within a slide, with a visual indicator of where content should be placed. The NFZ now enables:

• Alignment of a single shape now defaults to the bounds of the NFZ. You can still Ctrl+click to align to the edge of the slide
• Adding PowerPoint Drawing Guides to your slide master that reflects the NFZ boundaries
• Live editing of NFZ, to see changes on the slide as you adjust the dimensions
• Auto importing NFZ locations from your slide master's text layout for manual placeholder
• Automatically set the NFZ to change with each presentation's slide master
• No Fly Zone is hidden during Slide Import into Library and Paste Slides as Minislides

You can now hide 'Theme' or 'Standard' groups buttons on the Color Toolbar

Show or hide the Theme and Standard PowerPoint color palettes. Helpful if you would prefer to only use your Template theme colors or you have an extended custom color palette loaded. You can Customize the Color Palette Toolbar to do the following:

• Hide or show the standard PowerPoint colors
• Set up an extended Custom Color Palette for your organization and share this with your team
• Specify color names for your Custom Color Palette so they appear on mouseover (contact us to find out how to set up this feature)

You can now import, export and share all your settings

We've updated the PPT Productivity Settings menu, so you can now easily export and share all or a subset of your settings. Previously you could only export a couple of settings.

Simply set up your preferences (e.g. add an extended Color Palette, customize your status stamps, set up Paragraph styles/ bullet formats) and export. Another user can then import all (or a subset) of your settings for use. An easy way to share your setup with your team - no need to contact IT!

• All settings previously in other locations on the PPT Productivity Ribbon including margins, paragraph styles and template locations are now consolidated in the one Settings window
• Import/ Export/ Reset - all or partial configuration can now be exported to a file, shared with colleagues and imported. This feature is backward compatible with old exports of shortcut keys, stamps, etc
• Save your own Default Reset point at Import, for future Resets (this allows you to reset to your imported settings if you ever need to, rather than resetting to the "factory" settings
• Each Settings page has a detailed description and links to demos on the website

And we've 'squashed' some bugs - fixes in this release

• Color Bold text - now bolds all selected text if none is bold, otherwise just the bold characters
• Set outline of Hand drawn circles to match the fill color
• Table format button is back (it disappeared for a couple of releases, but it's back by popular request!)
• Slide Numbering fixed for total slide count, hidden slides, etc
• Shortcuts disabled bug fixed
• Removed shortcut mapping for some Status Indicators (the Tick/Cross/Plus/Minus). The default mappings added for these features caused issues on some international keyboards. Note - you can still add custom shortcut keys for these features
• Paste shapes from clipboard as minislide fixed
• Set Template to Default bug fixed

PPT Productivity has an active roadmap. If you have any new feature requests (or if you notice something not working as expected), please contact us. And remember you're always welcome to book in for a free demo to get a walkthrough of the features or ask any questions.

The next major release is the new PPT Productivity Agenda Wizard feature, due 2022.