What happened to the Reuse Slides PowerPoint feature button?

Microsoft has retired the PowerPoint Reuse Slide feature (as of July 2025). They advised this is to streamline the user experience and reduce redundancy. Microsoft's recommended alternative is to use the copy and paste features to reuse slides between PowerPoint presentations.

You may have already noticed that the Reuse Slide feature button has disappeared from your ribbon - the final date scheduled was originally July 31st 2025 - Microsoft extended this to January 2026.

What did the reuse slides in PowerPoint button do?

The Reuse Slides button in PowerPoint let users select to insert a PowerPoint slide from another presentation into the presentation they are currently editing. The Reuse Slides button was found on the Home tab of the Ribbon, under New Slide > Reuse Slides.

Once you click the Reuse Slides button, a taskpane appeared that let you select a presentation

There were options to choose content directly from the taskpane, or to open the presentation in PowerPoint for the reuse selection. An checkbox to use source formatting allowed you to choose whether to reuse the slide in the original formatting, or to apply your current presentation theme when adding it to your presentation.

How to reuse slides in PowerPoint - alternative to the Reuse Slides Feature

Entertainingly, Microsoft indicated that Cut and Paste is their suggested alternative with the decommissioning of their Reuse Slides feature! Specifically, they suggest that the alternative is to open the other presentation, copy the slide and then return to your current presentation and paste the slide.

However PPT Productivity PowerPoint add-in has a better alternative to the Reuse Slides PowerPoint feature. PPT Productivity's Slide Library for PowerPoint lets you set up a library of PowerPoint Slides, shapes, icons and images for quick reuse. You can setup a Personal Slide Library and also a Team Slide Library - allowing you to save your own slides for reuse and share a Team asset library in PowerPoint.

When you use PPT Productivity add-in with PowerPoint, your Slide Library is hosted on your nominated share drive (eg your company OneDrive) or your local machine. Once you save slides and shapes to the Slide Library, you can either search in the Slide Library Toolbar search bar or scroll to select slide/s or shape/s to add to your PowerPoint presentation.

Teams can set up a shared PowerPoint Team Slide Library , providing all team members with access to the same set of master slides and shapes in PowerPoint. The Team Slide Library setup is simple - any team member with familiarity working in PowerPoint will be able to create a shared library, and our friendly support team will assist with any questions along the way. The Team Slide Library can be hosted on your Sharepoint or other existing share drive in your organization, so all of your Slide Library content remains within your existing IT stack.

Note that you can have multiple folders in your PowerPoint Slide Library - for example, you can have a personal library of your favorite slides and shapes, plus a Team Slide library with your teams assets. The Slide Library Toolbar includes a filter option, so you can choose whether to search across all libraries that you have access to, or a selection.

Setup time is fast - once you download and install PPT Productivity, you could have your Team Slide Library in PowerPoint running within just 1-2 days. Your retain full control of your Team Slide Library and you can easily update it over time to include new slides and shapes or update/ remove old content.

We're confident the PPT Productivity Slide Library Toolbar is the best alternative to PowerPoint's Reuse Slides feature. If you're frequently creating or updating PowerPoint presentations and want to boost efficiency through reuse, contact us for a walkthrough or download the free PPT Productivity 30 day trial today.