How to Reuse Slides in PowerPoint & Save Time

If you are responsible for creating or managing presentations for your company or organization, you’ve probably wished you could retrieve a slide or image from an old presentation that you or a colleague created. Learning how to reuse slides in PowerPoint – instead of creating brand new ones – boosts productivity, promotes knowledge sharing, and aligns your team’s communication.

However, trying to pick out the slide you need from hundreds or even thousands of files (e.g., various folders, email attachments, SharePoint docs) and then copy-and-paste it into your new PowerPoint presentation is extremely time-consuming. It is also challenging to keep track of the most recent versions of slides when multiple people are working on the same presentation.

Fortunately, it’s no longer necessary to take slides from a previous presentation and paste them into the new one you’re working on. PowerPoint has a nifty “Reuse Slides” option to address this very problem.

To save time and increase overall efficiency, take advantage of this feature which enables you to quickly find and insert content from other presentations without having to search through old files or email attachments.

In this article, we will discuss the benefits of the Reuse Slides feature, as well as how to utilize it. Let’s get started!

Benefits of Reusing Slides in General

It’s no secret that reusing content can save you a lot of time and effort. When it comes to presentations with dozens of slides, this is especially true. Below are a few of the benefits of reusing slides.

1) Saves Time

As we mentioned before, one of the biggest benefits of reusing slides is that it saves you time. You no longer have to search through old presentations or email attachments to find the slide you’re looking for.

It is also helpful when you need to make changes to a slide. For example, if you need to update the data in a graph or chart, you can simply make the changes in the original slide and then reuse it in your new presentation.

This saves you from having to recreate the entire slide – and graph – from scratch, which would take significantly more time.

2) Promotes Knowledge Sharing

When you reuse slides from a previous presentation, you’re also sharing existing knowledge with your team. This is especially helpful if you have new team members who weren’t involved in creating the original presentation.

By sharing knowledge, you’re also helping to ensure that everyone is on the same page and aligned with the company’s and team’s mission and goals.

3) Aligns Team Communication

If you’re working on a presentation with multiple people, reusing slides can help to ensure that everyone is aligned with the same message. This is because you’re all using the same slides, which helps to keep everyone on the same page.

Another benefit is that anything included in the Notes pane of a slide will also transfer over whenever that slide is reused.

4) Increases Productivity

As mentioned earlier, reusing content help to dramatically increase productivity. This is because you’re not starting from scratch every time you need to create a new presentation.

Instead, you can quickly find the slides you need and reuse them in your new presentation. Saving time by skipping all the extra work is a huge benefit since it eliminates the need to build new slides from the ground up, which would be considerably more time-consuming. And since your saved slides have given you time back, you’re free to move on to other tasks boosting your overall productivity.

How to Use the Reuse Slides Feature in PowerPoint

Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of reusing slides, let’s take a look at how to use PowerPoint’s “Reuse Slides” feature.

Step 1: Open the presentation you’ll be working on in PowerPoint.

Step 2: After you choose the slide to enter, any other slide that you wish will be inserted after it. Select the correct slide.

The new slide will be positioned after the first slide in this scenario, since the 1st slide is selected.

Step 3: Click the ‘New Slide’ dropdown menu under the ‘Home’ tab.

Step 4: Click Reuse Slides at the bottom of the menu. A new panel will open on the right-hand side.

Step 5: PowerPoint offers a basic and an enterprise version of Reuse Slides. The free basic version will simply allow you to select a file. However, the enterprise version will help you find the slide you are looking for.

For the Basic Version

Just click “Browse” and select whether you want to look at a slide library or a file. If you’re using SharePoint and have a slide library, this is probably the best option for you. If you don’t have SharePoint, you may go through the PowerPoint presentation files on your computer.

Select the PowerPoint file you wish to search and hit ‘Open’.

For the Enterprise Version

Look for any slide on your PC, SharePoint, or OneDrive. The Reuse Slides window will display a preview of the first slide in each presentation that contains slides that match your search. Select the title slide for the file you wish to explore further.

Step 6: The file you picked will be opened in the Reuse Slides pane and shown as slide previews. Click the slide you wish to add.

Note: Check the bottom box labeled ‘Keep Source Formatting’ if you want to preserve the source formatting of the slide you’re adding. Otherwise, your current presentation’s formatting will be applied to the inserted slide.

Step 7: Right-click on a slide to discover extra choices and options.

You’re done! You’ve used PowerPoint’s Reuse Slides function to quickly and easily add new slides to your presentation.

Pros and Cons of Reusing Slides PowerPoint

Now that we’ve gone over how to use PowerPoint’s Reuse Slides feature, let’s take a look at the pros and cons. It’s important to know when to use this feature and when you should take the time to create a new presentation or slide.

Pros

Easy Search & Save Time

One of the biggest advantages of this function is that it can save you time when preparing presentations. This is because you can quickly search for and find the slides you need, instead of having to create new slides from scratch.

Slide Search Connections

Slides may be reused if you use Reuse Slides, which connects to SharePoint and One Drive so you don’t have to keep the file on your computer.

Cons

No Slide-Level Search Tool

This tool only allows you to search for file and presentation titles, not actual slide content. So if you’re looking for a specific piece of information on a slide, you’ll likely have to open each presentation file one-by-one until you find what you’re looking for.

No Filters

You are severely restricted in your search because you can only look for a term. There are no date filters, SharePoint column restrictions, or other metadata limitations.

Conclusion

Reusing slides in PowerPoint can be a huge time-saver when preparing presentations. However, it’s important to be aware of the pros and cons before using this feature. By taking the time to learn how to use PowerPoint’s Reuse Slides feature, you can maximize efficiency and save time when creating presentations.

Do you have any other tips for reusing slides in PowerPoint? Share them with us in the comments below!