How to Use PowerPoint with Only Your Keyboard

PowerPoint 2007’s KeyTips feature is a keyboard-based system that allows you to use PowerPoint without touching a mouse at all. KeyTips are distinct from keyboard shortcuts because they can involve up to five keys in a combination.

To use KeyTips, press the Alt key—little letters and numbers will appear next to the various commands on the screen. Hit the appropriate key (or keys) to use the command. For instance, to get to the Ribbon’s Home tab, you’d type Alt+H. Once there, a new set of letters and numbers appear that mark the Home tab commands. Press those keys to execute those commands. To make the shortcut numbers and letters disappear, hit the Alt key again.

Traditional keyboard shortcuts and Alt-key commands may sometimes overlap. For instance, you can save files using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S or the KeyTip Alt+F, S. This guide focuses on PowerPoint’s keyboard shortcuts, but also includes KeyTips for popular commands that don’t have built-in shortcuts.

Though it’s possible to create your own keyboard shortcuts in other Office 2007 programs, such as Word and Excel, to customize PowerPoint’s keyboard shortcuts you must download an add-in, a small third-party software program that works with PowerPoint. There are a variety of free add-ins you can use to customize PowerPoint’s keyboard shortcuts and other features. To find them, go to officeone.mvps.org/addins.html.

If you know how to write Visual Basic code, you can create your own keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint using macros—press Alt+F8 to open the Macro dialog box, name your macro, and click Create. A new window will open in which you can write the Visual Basic code for your macro. The more user-friendly “Record Macro” feature found in other Office 2007 programs—in which you step through the actions for which you’d like to create a keyboard shortcut and then save that shortcut as a macro—is not available in PowerPoint 2007.