how to join powerpoint presentations

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How to combine powerpoint presentations.

If you want to merge two PowerPoint files together, you have a few options you can try. Here's how to do it.

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Combining powerpoint files using the reuse slides option, copying and pasting powerpoint slides.

It's difficult for two or more people to work on a PowerPoint presentation simultaneously, as Office doesn't have the same collaboration features offered by  Google Slides . One way around this problem is to combine PowerPoint presentations into a single file.

Merging two PowerPoints can be done by either importing the slides using the "Reuse Slides" option or by using the copy-and-paste method instead. These instructions are designed to work for the latest versions of Office , including Office 2016 and 2019, as well as Office 365 and Online. You may find the instructions vary for older versions of PowerPoint.

Related: What's the Latest Version of Microsoft Office?

The "best" method for merging PowerPoint files, or at least the method that PowerPoint officially supports, is to use the "Reuse Slides" option. This feature merges the content of one presentation file into another, matching the theme of the new presentation file in the process.

To do this, open your PowerPoint presentation file---this is the file you're looking to merge into. In the "Home" tab on the ribbon bar, select the "New Slide" button and then click the "Reuse Slides" option at the bottom of the drop-down menu that appears.

A menu will appear on the right. Click the "Browse" button to locate the PowerPoint presentation file that you want to merge into your open file.

Locate your second PowerPoint file and then click the "Open" button to insert it.

A list of slides from your second presentation will appear in the "Reuse Slides" menu on the right.

First, you'll need to decide on the formatting for your inserted slides. If you want to keep the format (including the theme) from the original presentation, make sure that the "Keep Source Formatting" checkbox is enabled at the bottom of the "Reuse Slides" menu. If you don't check this, your inserted slides will have the style of the open presentation applied to them.

To insert individual slides, right-click a slide and then select the "Insert Slide" option. Otherwise, click the "Insert All Slides" to copy all of the slides into your open PowerPoint presentation.

Your slide (or slides) will then be inserted into the open presentation, immediately underneath the currently selected slide. With your PowerPoint files combined, you can then save your merged file by clicking File > Save or Save As.

While the "Reuse Slides" method allows you to change the format of your slides before you insert them, you can also combine PowerPoint files by copying the slides from one open PowerPoint file and inserting them into another.

To do this, open a PowerPoint presentation and select the slides you want to copy from the slide selection menu on the left. From there, right-click on the selected slides and then press "Copy" to copy them to your clipboard.

Switch to the PowerPoint presentation you're looking to paste your slides into and then, in the slide selection menu on the left, right-click at the position you want to stick your slides.

To paste the slides and apply the theme of the open presentation file to them, click the "Use Destination Theme" paste option.

To keep the original theme and formatting, select the "Keep Source Formatting" paste option instead.

The slides you paste will then appear in your new presentation at the position you selected. You can then save the merged file by clicking File > Save or Save As.

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How to Combine PowerPoints on Mac or Windows

Last Updated: June 20, 2022 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Darlene Antonelli, MA . Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field. She earned an MA in Writing from Rowan University in 2012 and wrote her thesis on online communities and the personalities curated in such communities. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 8,157 times. Learn more...

Do you want to use the slides from your other presentation in this one? The "Reuse Slides" function in Microsoft PowerPoint makes it easy to reuse slides from other presentations. It's also a helpful tool that will help you merge your presentations into one PowerPoint. If the "Reuse Slides" feature isn't available for your version of PowerPoint, you can also copy and paste slides, use the "Insert Object" menu, or drag and drop slides. This wikiHow article teaches you multiple ways you can combine PowerPoint presentations on your Windows or Mac computer.

Reusing Slides

• These imported slides will change to copy the theme and design of the other slides. If you don't want it to change, you can select Keep source formatting before you import them.

• If you want the slide(s) to maintain the original design theme and formatting, check the box next to Keep source formatting . [1] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source
• Once you've selected the slides from the original source, they will appear in the new PowerPoint immediately.

Copy and Paste

• Use this option if "Reuse slides" isn't available since this will allow you the same options.

• If you want to select more than one slide, press and hold Shift as you click multiple sides.

Insert Object

• Use this if there are animations with the slide that you want to preserve. You won't be able to fine-tune the slide like you would if you used "Reuse Slide," but it will have all the animations and slide transitions from the previous slideshow.

• If you don't see the "New Slide" option, make sure the Home tab is selected.

• Stretch the image to fill the entire slide to prevent it from changing sizes randomly.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/reuse-import-slides-from-another-presentation-c67671cd-386b-45dd-a1b4-1e656458bb86#OfficeVersion=Windows
• ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/copy-and-paste-your-slides-1fe39ace-4df6-4346-b724-30a6e2c0aeab#OfficeVersion=Windows

About This Article

1. Open the presentation that you want to add slides to. 2. Click where you want to add your slide. 3. Click the Home tab. 4. Click the arrow next to "New Slide" and select Reuse Slides . 5. Click Open a PowerPoint File and double-click the file you want to use. 6. Click a slide to add to your PowerPoint. 7. Save your presentation. Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to Merge PowerPoints

It’s easy to merge your PowerPoint presentations

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What to Know

• In your primary PowerPoint: Home > New Slide > Reuse Slides > Browse .
• In your secondary PowerPoint: Open . Right-click individual slides and choose Insert Slide , or select Insert All Slides .

This article explains how to combine two or more PowerPoint presentations into one presentation. Whether you’re using Mac or PC versions of PowerPoint, it’s easy to combine PowerPoint presentations.

Method 1: Reuse Slides

Microsoft PowerPoint provides the option to Reuse Slides . This method doesn’t require you to open all of your PowerPoint presentations, so it’s the fastest and easiest way to combine presentations.

Open your main PowerPoint presentation. You can choose the largest presentation, or whichever one has formatting you want to keep.

When you insert slides, they’ll be inserted after the slide you have currently selected. Keep this in mind before inserting slides.

Go to the Home tab in the upper-left corner.

Click New Slide . A drop-down menu will open.

Newer versions of PowerPoint have a dedicated Reuse Slides button.

Select Reuse Slides , located at the bottom of the menu.

Click Browse .

Find your second PowerPoint file and click Open . The slides from your second presentation will appear in the Reuse Slides menu.

Make sure Keep source formatting is checked if you want your slides to keep their formatting. If it isn’t checked, the formatting of your main PowerPoint will be applied to the slides when you insert them.

If you want to insert individual slides, select them and click Insert Slide .

If you want to reuse all slides in the PowerPoint presentation, click Insert All . If you don't see this, right-click one slide and choose Insert All Slides .

After your slides are merged into your presentation, Save your work.

Method 2: Copy slides

If you need to combine slides from several different PowerPoint presentations, copying PowerPoint Sides is another quick method. It’s easy to choose where each batch of slides ends up in your final presentation.

Open the PowerPoint presentation with slides you want to move.

Select the slides you want to copy from the slide viewer on the left.

Right-click the selected slides and copy them.

Open your main PowerPoint presentation.

Right-click where you want your slides to be inserted. The Paste Options menu will appear.

You can also use CTRL + V to paste the slides. On Mac, use command + V . The Paste Options menu will still appear.

If you want your inserted slides to match your main PowerPoint, click Use Destination Theme on the left. This will adapt the copied slides to your main presentation.

If you want your inserted slides to maintain their theme, click Keep Source Formatting . Your slides will keep their original appearance.

After moving all of your slides, save your project.

First, combine PowerPoint presentations by copying and pasting slides into the primary presentation or using the  Reuse Slide  option. After combining slides into one merged document,  save your PowerPoint as a PDF . Go to  File  >  Save as  >  PDF  or  File  >  Save & Send  >  Create PDF/XPS Document  >  Publish .

To merge multiple locked PowerPoints, you need to know the passwords to unlock them. Once you have password access, open the PowerPoints and select  File  >  Info  >  Protect Presentation  >  Encrypt with Password  > delete the content in the  Password  field > and select  OK . Now you can reuse or copy slides into one main presentation.

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Home Blog PowerPoint Tutorials How to Combine PowerPoint Files

How to Combine PowerPoint Files

When making a PowerPoint presentation consisting of different reports, charts, and analyses, there might be a need to combine slides from other PowerPoint templates and presentations. There are different ways by which you can combine PowerPoints into one slide deck, including reusing slides from another presentation and copying them with or without the source formatting.

Method 1: Reuse Slides to Merge PowerPoint Presentations

To reuse slides from another PowerPoint presentation, go to Home -> New Slides -> Reuse Slides . Depending on your Ribbon menu settings, you might also be able to go directly to Home -> Reuse Slides .

Open Browse to select the PowerPoint presentation that you wish to merge.

Select the PowerPoint presentation to combine PowerPoints by selecting the required slides.

You can click on the slides to add to your existing presentation or add them individually or simultaneously via the right-click context menu.  To ensure the formatting of your slides doesn’t inherit the current presentation, check the Keep source formatting option. However, if you wish to use the formatting of the current slide deck, you can skip this option so that the imported slides adopt the theme of your current presentation.

By reusing slides from one or more PowerPoint presentations, you can merge different slides from multiple PowerPoints into one slide deck.

Method 2: Copy Slides to Insert in a PowerPoint Presentation

Similar to how you copy Google Slides templates and slides in most other presentation applications, you can also copy your slides from one or more PowerPoint presentations to combine slides in PowerPoint.

Go to the PowerPoint presentation from which you wish to copy slides, hold the CTRL key, and select the slides to copy by clicking on them. Once all required slides are selected, use CTRL+C or the right-click context menu to copy the slides.

Go to the PowerPoint presentation where you wish to merge the copied slides and paste the slides using CTRL+V or via right-click menu. If you’re using the latter, you can paste slides with source formatting, without source formatting, and as standalone images.

Final Words

Now that you know how to combine PPT files, you can choose different slides from PowerPoint presentations and templates to include in a single presentation deck. Merging PowerPoint slides and even entire presentations by using the methods mentioned above can also save you time in reproducing frequently used slides, such as introductory slides for your organization or portfolio slides to showcase your work.

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How To Merge Two PowerPoint Presentations? Detailed Guide On How To Combine PowerPoints

Save your time and hassle by merging multiple PowerPoint presentations to reuse your already created presentations and optimize your workflow. This blog will guide you through the best methods to combine multiple slides into a single presentation.

If you work in sales, customer service, or as an independent consultant, you may need to utilize the same templates in many of your presentations. Of course, you don’t want to keep making the same slides for different presentations. That’s why you should consider learning how to combine PowerPoints slides.

That’s where merging slides in PowerPoint comes in handy when creating presentations from previously generated slideshows. In your current presentation, you can reuse slides from prior presentations to modify content, strengthen concepts, debunk ideas, or reference facts.

It’s all quite simple. Allow us to demonstrate how to combine multiple powerpoints into one.

How To Merge PowerPoints?

Consider the following five approaches and their associated stages to know how to combine powerpoints:

• Copy and Paste slides
• Reuse PowerPoint Slides
• Use Insert Object to Merge PowerPoint Files
• Drag and Drop PowerPoint Slides
• Merge with Compare Function

1. Copy and Paste Slides

The easiest option to combine multiple slides is the copy-and-paste option. Follow the below steps to learn how to merge two PowerPoint presentations:

• Open both the slides that you want to combine.
• Right-click on a slide and select “copy.” You can also copy it by using the Ctrl+C command.
• Now, open the slide on which you want to combine this slide.
• Choose a location in between your slides where you want to add the slide. You can do this from the left-side navigation pane. 
• Right-click and choose “Paste”. Or you can use the “Ctrl+V” command. You can select “Use Destination Theme” or “Keep Source Formatting” to meet your needs.
• Repeat this step for multiple slides.

2. Reuse PowerPoint Slides

Let’s learn how to combine powerpoints using the Reuse option. Reusing slides is the simplest technique for incorporating slides from one presentation into another. This strategy allows you to manage what slides you add and where you place them. The reuse slides approach appears in this example. Follow the below steps to understand how to merge powerpoints:

• Open PowerPoint, then open the document to which you wish to add slides.
• Select where you wish to add a slide or slides. Then, click between two existing slides.
• In the ‘Main Menu,’ click the ‘Insert’ tab.
• Then, on the left side of the menu, click the ‘New Slide’ option.
• Then choose ‘Reuse Slides.’
• Click the ‘Browse’ button to access the ‘Reuse Slides’ dialog box. If you click the option next to ‘Keep source formatting,’ the newly added slides will keep their original formatting. When you uncheck the box, their formatting will match the main presentation.
• Insert your slide here. Browse the presentations, choose the one from which you wish to add the slides, and then click ‘Open.’
• You will see the thumbnails of the available slides. Browse and pick the ones you want to include in your main document. You can import all slides from the external presentation by clicking ‘Insert All Slides.’
• When choosing the slides to include, click the ‘Apply Theme to All Slides’ option to replace the theme of the primary presentation with that of the secondary presentation.

This strategy is perfect if you want to merge ppt slides. Use it for adding a slide or two to your PowerPoint presentation. It is also the best approach for including bits and pieces from other presentations in your primary presentation. Although you can use this approach to insert all slides from an external presentation, using the ‘Insert Object’ option is preferable.

3. how to combine powerpoints using Insert Object Methods?

The insert object method is best if you wish to insert all slides from an external presentation while keeping the animations and transitions between them.

Remember that after you include the slides in your new presentation, they will no longer be connected to the original file. As a result, any modifications you make to the original file will not affect the slides you include in your primary presentation.

Now that we’ve addressed that let’s examine how to merge powerpoints using the insert object technique. Follow the below steps to learn how to combine multiple powerpoints into one:

• Open MS PowerPoint and the main presentation.
• Go to the slide where you want to add another slide
• In the Main Menu, choose the ‘Insert’ tab.
• In the “Text” group, Select the ‘Object’ option.
• The ‘Insert Object’ dialog box will appear. Choose the ‘Create from file’ option there.
• Click “Browse” and select the slide you want to add.
• Following that, you will only view the first slide of the imported presentation. The remaining slides are below, though you can’t see them now.
• To prevent changes in the size of the slides after the presentation is played, stretch the added object to suit the size of the slide of your main presentation. After inserting the complete item into your main presentation, you can alter and tweak it to ensure its good performance.

4. Drag And Drop PowerPoint Slides

Let’s understand how to combine powerpoints using the drag & drop method. A drag-and-drop approach is one of the simplest methods of integrating two presentations. This feature is useful if you have two different presentations that you want to combine with PowerPoint or are working on a collective project. Follow the below steps to learn how to combine two powerpoints into one:

• Open both presentations on your PC or Mac, and minimize the PowerPoint software so that you can view both simultaneously.
• Long-press the slide you want to relocate and drag it to its new location with your mouse. You should do this for each slide; luckily, you can select all of them by clicking on the first slide, holding down the ‘Shift’ key, and then clicking on the final slide.
• The slide’s position will be highlighted with a red line. Your final presentation will be updated to match the design of the receiving document. Of course, you can always change the document’s overall look by clicking the ‘Design’ button at the top of your presentation.

5. how to combine powerpoints with compare function

This compare function combines your multiple slides with uniform formatting. Follow the below steps to learn how to merge PowerPoint presentations:

• Open the presentation in which you want to add another slide.
• Select the “Review” Tab from the Top Menu.
• Click on the “Compare” function.
• Browse the presentation you want to combine and select “Merge.” It will combine all the slides from both presentations.

It’s great to learn how to combine powerpoints into one slide to increase the usability of slides and save time in creating new slides from scratch. The techniques described in this blog will assist you in taking your PowerPoint abilities to the next level. In minutes, you can combine and merge PowerPoint presentations like an expert.

Does the formatting change if I combine ppt slides?

The formatting isn’t usually affected. However, you can choose to keep formatting or not while merging.

What are some tips for effectively merging slides?

Organize your slides beforehand, ensure consistent formatting and styling across all slides, remove duplicate content, and thoroughly review the merged presentation to ensure accuracy and coherence.

Is there a limit to the number of presentations I can merge?

Usually, there is no limit to the number of presentations to merge.

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How to Combine Multiple PowerPoint Presentations

There are 2 different ways, depending on how you want them to appear

Do you have multiple PowerPoint presentations that you need to combine or merge into one presentation? I’ve had to do this myself a couple of times and one of the most important aspects when merging presentations is whether you want to maintain the format and theme of the inserted presentation or have it match the theme of the main presentation. The second most important factor is whether you need to maintain any animations and transitions that might be included in the inserted presentation.

Depending on how you want the inserted slides to appear in the main presentation, you will need to choose between two different methods for joining the presentations. In this article, I’ll mention both methods along with the advantages and disadvantages for each method.

The first method uses the Reuse Slides option in PowerPoint and the second method uses the Insert Object option.

Reuse Slides Method

If you want the inserted slides to match the theme of your main presentation, then you have to use the Reuse Slides option. The inserted slides will simply take the slides exactly as they are in the external presentation and add them to the main presentation.

However, there is one big caveat: none of the animations or transitions will be carried over. Whatever you see on the slide in the normal viewing mode is what will get imported into the main presentation.

If you need to maintain all the animations or transitions, then skip down to the Insert Object method.

To get started with this method, open the main presentation and then click between the two slides you want to import the slides into. It’s worth nothing that this method also lets you pick and choose which slides you want to insert from an external presentation, whereas the Insert Object method will insert the entire presentation.

Now click on the Insert menu and then click on the words New Slide  and you’ll see a menu appear. At the very bottom of that menu is an option called Reuse Slides .

When you click on that, a tab will appear on the right hand side. Click on the Browse button and then select Browse File . Check the Keep source formatting  box if you want keep the theme and text formatting of the external presentation.

If you uncheck that box, then when you go to insert the slides into the main presentation, the original formatting will not be kept. Instead the slides will use the theme and formatting of the main presentation.

Select the PowerPoint Presentation you want to insert and then click OK. Immediately, you should see a small thumbnail and the title of each slide displayed.

As you can see above, the second presentation has a different theme than my first presentation. There are a number of things you can do at this point. Firstly, if you just want to insert one slide or a couple of slides from your external presentation, simply click on the slide and it will be inserted!

The formatting will depend on whether you checked the Keep source formatting box like I explained above. As shown below, I inserted just one slide from the external presentation and kept the source formatting.

It will be inserted wherever you had clicked earlier with the red line. If you want to insert all the slides, just select the Insert All Slide s option that comes up when you right-click on any of the slides.

Lastly, you can apply the theme used in the external presentation to your main presentation by right-clicking and choosing Apply Theme to All Slides . This will apply the external presentation theme to the main presentation.

As mentioned earlier, you lose all animations, effects, transitions, etc when using this method. Now let’s talk about the other way to merge two presentations.

Insert Object Method

The second method will insert the entire external presentation into one slide as an object. You then have to configure some settings so that when you run your slideshow, it also runs through all the slides in the external presentation.

There are a couple of things that need to be mentioned before we get into how to use this method:

1. When you insert the presentation as an object, it is not a link to the presentation, but an actual full copy into the main presentation. This means that if you open the external presentation later after inserting it into the main presentation and make changes to it, those changes will not be reflected in the imported version inside the main presentation.

2. If you do want to make changes to an already inserted presentation, you can edit it inside the main presentation. Again, those changes are only made to the version inside the main presentation.

In my opinion, this method is better than the Reuse Slides method because it lets you keep all your animations and transitions and it allows you to change or keep the theme of the inserted presentation.

To get started, open the main presentation and then insert a new slide. Make sure to delete any default text boxes or anything else on the new slide so that it is completely blank.

Now click on the Insert tab and then click on Object .

Select the Create from file radio button and click the Browse button. Select the external presentation you want to insert into your main presentation.

You’ll now see the first slide of the presentation inserted as a selectable object. All of the other slides are there, but you just can’t see them.

The next step is to move your cursor to the upper left corner of the inserted object until it turns into a double sided arrow. Click and then drag the corner to the upper left corner of the main slide. Now do the same thing with the bottom right corner of the object and drag it to the bottom right corner on the main slide.

Now the inserted object should be the exact same size as the slide that it was inserted onto. You want to do this so that there won’t be any change in the size of the slides when you are playing the presentation.

Once that is setup, we have to configure the second presentation to play when we hit that slide that we inserted the presentation into. To do this, select the object, click on the Animations ribbon, click on Add Animation and then scroll all the way to the bottom where it says OLE Action Verbs .

Another dialog will pop up and you want to choose Show . If you were to play the presentation at this point, you would notice that when you reach the slide with the inserted presentation, it will show all the slides in the inserted presentation, but it will also include a still slide of the first slide at the front and back of the inserted presentation.

This was kind of annoying to me and luckily you can almost get rid of it. First, click on Animations again and then click on Animation Pane , which will show up at the right.

In the Animation Pane, you will see the inserted object listed as Object 1 or Object 2, etc. and when you select it, there will be a small black arrow you can click on. This will bring up a few options and then first one you want to select is Start With Previous .

Now when you play the presentation, it won’t show you that still image of the first slide but will actually play the first slide from the external presentation. To get rid of the still image at the end of the presentation, you have to select Effect Options from the menu above and then select Hide After Animation from the After animation dropdown box.

It’s not perfect because it still shows you the empty slide that the inserted presentation was put once before the presentation ends. Luckily, I found a simple hack for this too that works really well. Simply add something to the slide that has the external presentation object like a text box or whatever you like and then right-click on the object and choose Send to Back .

This will effectively hide the object behind the presentation object. Now when you play your presentation, it will hide the presentation object after the last slide because that is what we chose in the After animation option. When the presentation object is hidden, you’ll see any content that was hidden under it. It’s a great way to avoid having that blank slide show up during the presentation.

One last thing I wanted to mention was about editing the inserted presentation. You can right-click anywhere on the object and choose Presentation Object – Edit to edit any slide in the inserted presentation directly within the main presentation.

Hopefully, this was a detailed enough tutorial for anyone wanting to merge, combine or insert one PowerPoint presentation into another. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

Founder of Online Tech Tips and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications. Read Aseem's Full Bio

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How to Combine PowerPoints

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When making a presentation, you don't need to create slides from scratch. You can insert slides from other sources to save some time.

Insert Slides from an Outline

You can create a presentation from an outline, saved as a Word document.

• Click the New Slide list arrow.

• Select a document containing an outline.

A slide is inserted for every top level in the outline automatically.

Insert Slides from Another Presentation

If you have slides in an existing presentation that you want to add, PowerPoint allows you to import them directly into an open presentation.

• Select Reuse Slides .

A file browser window opens, where you can browse for the PowerPoint presentation that contains the slides you want to use.

• Select another presentation.

The Reuse Slides pane opens, displaying the slides in the selected presentation.

• Select where you want to insert the slide.

The selected slide is added to the presentation. Notice that the content of the slide is copied over, but the theme—including the colors, background, and font—is not.

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3 Ways to Combine Multiple PowerPoint Presentation Files

So you made two different PowerPoint presentations and are stuck with merging them together? Don’t worry. You want to match their themes or keep them original? Covered. You want to drop/keep transitions? Cool.PowerPoint got it all covered for you. However you want to merge slides, you can do it all in PowerPoint itself. This article will take you through different methods and options that will let you combine multiple PowerPoint Presentation files the way you please.

Table of Contents

Method 1: Reuse Slides

When to use:

• If you do not want to keep the transitions and animations of the inserted presentation after merging it into the main presentation.
• If you want to merge only a few slides of inserted presentation and not the whole presentation.

How to use:

1.Open the main presentation in which you want to insert another presentation.

2.Decide the two slides between which you want to insert the new slides and click between them.

3. A red line will appear.

4.Click on the ‘ Insert ’ menu.

5.Open the drop-down menu by clicking on ‘ New Slide ’.

6.At the bottom of the menu, click on ‘ Reuse Slides ’.

7.On the right-hand side, the Reuse Slides tab will appear.

8.If you want to keep the theme of the inserted presentation, check the ‘ Keep source formatting ’ checkbox at the bottom of the tab. Else, if you want it to take the theme of the main presentation, uncheck the box.

9.Now, browse the file you want to insert and click on OK.

10.You can now see all the slides of the presentation to be inserted.

11.If you want a few particular slides from this presentation to appear in the main presentation, simply click on the thumbnail . Else, right-click on any thumbnail and click on ‘ Insert all slides ’.

12.Adding a slide while having ‘ Keep source formatting ’ checked you will get something like this.

And unchecking ‘Keep source formatting’ will give you.

13.If you want the whole presentation with the theme of the inserted presentation, right-click on any thumbnail in the ‘ Reuse Slides ’ tab and click on ‘ Apply theme to all slides ’ and you will then get:

14.If you want to insert the new slides at different positions in the main presentation, then before clicking on any particular slide to be inserted in the ‘Reuse Slides’ tab, just click on that main slide thumbnail (on the left-hand side of the window), below which you want your inserted slide. You can do this for every inserted slide to get this:

Method 2: Insert Object

• If you want to keep the transitions and animations of the inserted presentation after merging it into the main presentation.
• If you want to merge the whole presentation into the main presentation.

2. Add a blank slide at the position you want your inserted slide to be. You can do this by clicking on ‘ New Slide ’ in the insert menu and then clicking on ‘ Blank ’.

3.Click on ‘ Object ’ in the insert menu.

4.Select ‘ Create from file ’ radio button and browse the presentation you want to be inserted and click on OK.

5.You will see the first slide of the inserted presentation in the center of the blank slide you had inserted.

6. Resize the inserted slide to fit the main slide completely by dragging the corners of the inserted slide.

7.Click on the Object.

8.Go to the Animations menu and click on ‘ Add Animation ’.

9.Click on ‘ OLE action verbs ’ at the bottom of the drop-down menu.

11.In the dialog box, select ‘ Show ’ and click on OK.

13.Go to the ‘ Animations ’ menu and click on ‘ Animation Pane ’.

14.On the right-hand side, a tab will open. You can see the inserted object in the tab.

15.Click on the downward pointer beside the object name and a list will open.

16.Select ‘ Start With Previous ’.

17.Now, s elect the object in the tab and click on the downward pointer again.

18.Select ‘ Effect Options ’. A dialog box will open.

19.In the ‘After Animation’ drop-down list, click on ‘ Hide After Animation ’.

20.Now insert some object like a text box or an image on the main slide containing the inserted presentation object.

21.Right-click on it and select ‘ Send to Back ’.

22. You now have your presentations merged.

Method 3: Copy-Paste

If you want to keep animations of the inserted presentation and want to keep/change the theme and transitions.

1.Open the presentation you want to insert and select the slides that you want to insert into the main presentation.

2.Press ‘ Ctrl+C ’ to copy them.

3.Open the main presentation.

4.Right-click in the left pane wherever you want to insert the slides.

5.Here you get two paste options:

1.USE DESTINATION THEME:

Selecting this will cause the inserted slides to adopt the theme and transitions of the main presentation while keeping the animations of inserted slides intact.

2.KEEP SOURCE FORMATTING:

Selecting this will keep the theme, transitions, and animations of inserted file itself.

6. Select the option you want and you are done.

There you go! You can now merge your presentations with any possible combinations.

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I hope the above steps were helpful and now you can easily Combine Multiple PowerPoint Presentation Files, but if you still have any questions regarding this tutorial then feel free to ask them in the comment section.

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Aditya Farrad

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How to combine and merge PowerPoint-presentations

In my work as an AV-technician on conference and events, I receive Powerpoint presentations from speakers that represents different companies. My job is to make sure that these are displayed on the projector/screen at the right moment exactly as they were made. To simplify this task, we made Auto Presentation Switcher (APS) which lets you open and display new presentations using keyboard-shortcuts and network-commands. But you may ask, isn’t this something that can be done from within PowerPoint? How can we merge and switch PowerPoint presentations without using third-party software?

And yes, as it turns out, Powerpoint has methods for combining slides and linking presentations. Today we will show different ways to work with multiple PowerPoint presentations for live events, and focus on 3 methods:

• Paste and reuse slides
• Switch presentations with APS
• Use hyperlinks

After reading this blogpost, you should be a master of combining and merging PowerPoint-presentations. This can solve a lot of problems if you work as an event-producer or AV-technician on live events.

1. Paste and reuse Powerpoint slides

Some event-organizers want to have all the slides from the different speakers in one master-presentation. Then they can control everything from one presentation-clicker, and never exit the presentation during the show.

To create this presentation, you can paste the slides you need into one master-presentation. Or you can use the Reuse Slides method, which is an option in Powerpoint to import multiple slides. When pasting and reusing slides, there is one pitfall that you should be aware of, which can easily be overlooked: By default, if you bring slides from one presentation into another, PowerPoint can automatically make those slides look like the new presentation, by applying the destination theme to them. If you want the pasted slides to look identical to the original, you need to apply the option “Keep Source Formatting”

Pasting and reusing slides on Mac

This video shows how to paste slides and keep source formatting when using Mac:

There is an easier way to import multiple slides: using the “Reuse Slides” method. However, when I tested this for Mac, I couldn’t find a way to keep the source formatting. Notice in the video below that the popup-square for the theme-options doesn’t appear after reusing the slides. So, unless I did something fundamentally wrong here, the “reuse slides” method on Mac can´t be used in my workflow. The reused slides wont be identical to the originals.

Paste and reuse slides on PC

It seems that these things work better on Windows: When I paste slides, the formatting-options appear as an option before the slide is inserted, making it harder to miss: 

And when re-using slides, the “keep original formatting” is chosen as the default option: 

This is one example where the PC version of PowerPoint is more developed than the Mac counterpart. If your workflow relies heavily on combining slides from different presentations, I recommend using the Windows version.

2. Use APS to switch between different PowerPoint presentations

The method of pasting and reusing slides takes time, and it’s easy to screw up the formatting. And, if the presentations have different aspect-ratio of let’s say 16:9 and 4:3, then combining the slides becomes more difficult. For these reasons, I think its a good idea to have alternative solutions for working with multiple Powerpoint presentations. One of the reasons we made APS was to solve this problem of quickly and seamlessly displaying content from different presentations. With APS, you don’t need to edit the presentations at all, instead you get shortcuts and network-commands to open and display new presentations. And with the seamless switching method , the audience wont notice the switch: The transitions will look the same as if you progress to the next slide.

3. Link PowerPoint presentations with internal hyperlinks

If you don’t want to use a third-party program like APS to switch presentations, you can try the internal solution presented by Powerpoint: Hyperlinks. This lets you create buttons in a slide that jumps to another presentation. This video shows how it’s done: 

The Hyperlink-button switches seamlessly to the next presentation. When pushing “escape”, you go back to the presentation with the hyperlink. I recently had a discussion on Reddit where the user u/SteveRindsberg explained how he used Hyperlinks to display different Powerpoint presentations: He has one presentation which only consists of one slide with hyperlinks to all the other speaker-presentations. The hyperlink-slide acts as a remote control. To exit the speaker-presentations and return to the hyperlink-slide, he push “escape”. In this setup, the presentation with the hyperlink is always in slideshow-mode but hidden behind the speaker-presentations started from the hyperlink. I think this is a sound method, and a viable alternative to APS. However, in my biased opinion, being the founder of APS, I do want to point out some advantages of using APS compared to using hyperlinks:

• Easier preparation. With APS you just need to sort the presentations in a folder. Creating a master-slide with the hyperlinks can be more intimidating if you don’t know Powerpoint very well.
• You get more ways to trigger the command to switch presentations. The commands can be controlled from Companion and Stream Deck, making APS compatible with professional A/V networks. With Hyperlinks you can only start the presentations by pushing the links with the mouse
• Switching presentations with APS are seamless, whereas with the Hyperlink-method there is no way to avoid displaying the slide with all the hyperlinks. Arguably, you can use a video-switcher to smooth out the transitions, but with APS these things are taken care of within the computer.

Summary: The best way to combine and merge Powerpoint presentations for professional live A/V

In this blogtext we have shown different ways you can merge slides and switch presentations, and if you are a professional A/V technician working with presentations, I think its useful to know all of them:

• Pasting and reusing slides can be a good solution if you have time to prepare this, and the organizer wants to have all the slides in one presentation
• APS works great to quickly and seamlessly switch between different presentations with a minimum of preparation
• Hyperlinks works well if you are experienced with Powerpoint, you like to have a page with links to all your presentations, and you don’t need the seamless transitions between the presentations.

As always, bring different tools to your arsenal, and be prepared for any request the client might have. But before we finish this text I want to repeat one thing: If you decide to paste slides or reuse slides, remember to turn on the setting for Keep Source Formatting. Otherwise the speakers can be in for a surprise when they see the presentation on the projector. 

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Presentations > How to create an educational presentation

How to create an educational presentation

Using presentations can be an effective way to teach lessons and ensure that your audience can retain new facts. With visual aids, video and animated clips, and even interactive quizzes, you can use presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint to dazzle your students.

The advantages of PowerPoint presentations in education

Students have different learning styles : some are visual learners, who retain images and videos more effectively than speech. Some take to audio and sound more easily. Others prefer to interact with their lessons—which usually refers to holding physical objects but can also be directly related to guessing answers and responding to questions.

Fortunately, PowerPoint’s versatility means that it can appeal to all of these diverse learning styles. You can embed multimedia elements such as videos, audio clips, and interactive graphics, creating a multi-sensory experience. PowerPoint can also be helpful when considering any visual impairments that your audience members may have so that you can present with different forms of media to cater to all learning styles.

Tell your story with captivating presentations

Powerpoint empowers you to develop well-designed content across all your devices

Before diving into PowerPoint, consider the following factors to help your audience retain as much information as possible:

• Define lesson objectives: Set a goal for what kind of lesson you want to impart to your audience. What do you want students to learn? You can answer this question by outlining your lesson objectives and clearly defining your goals, which will also guide the structure and content of your presentation.
• Organize your content: Divide your lesson into key points and organize them into a logical sequence that builds in complexity. Start with basic points or even a review of previous concepts before diving into more intricate or complicated aspects of your lesson. Each point should be presented on a separate slide to maintain clarity and focus.
• Use visuals effectively: Enhance your presentation with relevant visuals such as images, videos, audio clips, or interactive simulations to cater to different learning preferences and keep the presentation engaging. These can convey complex information more efficiently than text alone. At the same time, it can be easy to be carried away by inundating your audience with too many visual elements, so ensuring smooth flow and transitions is key.
• Encourage interaction: Foster active participation by including interactive elements like quizzes, polls, or discussion prompts to prompt student engagement. After you introduce a new concept in your lesson, these interactive elements can reinforce them and make them stick.
• Practice delivery: Public speaking isn’t always easy. One of the most effective ways to sound confident is to practice delivering your presentation before the day of your lesson. Familiarize yourself with the content and also the way that it’s presented: pacing, transitions, and interactive elements. This preparation will boost your confidence, ensure a smooth flow, and help you address any potential challenges during the actual presentation.

Staid lessons can be livened up thanks to the power of presentation! No matter what you’re teaching—the ABCs to a kindergarten class, or nuclear physics to a graduate department—you can check out more tips for effective presenting such as how to create compelling presentation designs , using the 10-20-30 rule for presenting, or discovering the history of PowerPoint .

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Create a standout UGC pitch deck in PowerPoint

march 22, 2024

by Kate Shewaga

If you're a content creator looking to take your user-generated content (UGC) game to the next level, you're in the right place. In this post, I'll share my secrets for creating a customized Microsoft PowerPoint pitch deck that will help you connect with brands and businesses like a pro.

Why customization matters

In the booming world of UGC, it's essential to stand out from the crowd. One fantastic way to do this is by creating a tailored pitch deck that showcases your unique skills and style. Customization is key, and I'll walk you through the process using a template from Microsoft Create .

Choose your template

Start with a template so you can hit the ground running with a clean, polished design. Visit Microsoft Create and explore their PowerPoint templates and pitch deck templates . When you find a design you like, download it.

For this tutorial, I used the Light sales pitch presentation template. This sleek and professional template is the perfect starting point for your UGC pitch deck.

Personalize the cover page

First impressions matter, so make sure your cover page is on point. I always include the name of the brand I'm pitching to show that I've created this presentation specifically for them. It's a small detail that goes a long way in demonstrating your dedication and professionalism.

Customize colors and images

Next, it's time to make the template your own. I customize the colors to match my personal brand and incorporate professional photos I've taken myself. This helps the pitch deck feel authentic and shows off my unique style.

Showcase your work

To give brands a taste of what you can do, include a few concept ideas and sample videos you've created in their niche. I like to add multiple pages with videos of my recent work to highlight my skills and experience. Just remember to watermark any videos featuring products that brands haven't purchased yet!

Include testimonials and analytics

Social proof is powerful, so don't be afraid to include testimonials or analytics from your previous high-performing content. This demonstrates your track record of success and helps build trust with potential brand partners.

Wrapping up

Creating a short, informative PowerPoint pitch deck can be the secret sauce that makes your UGC pitch unforgettable. By customizing a professional template with your own colors, images, and work samples, you'll be well on your way to landing those coveted brand deals.

Head to Microsoft Create and start crafting your standout UGC pitch deck today!

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