PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the Slide Show tab of PowerPoint 2010 (or 2011 for Mac). Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display. Hi Toby, yes you can, using either a Template or Theme file. In PowerPoint, do all the adjustments you want, then go to File Save As, and then under the file name box, in the drop down menu (which by default says ‘PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx)’, choose either ‘PowerPoint Template (.potx)’ or ‘Office Theme (.thmx)’. PowerPoint Labs is a time-saving tool that offers several features to make your presentations more eye-catching. For example, the add-in enables you to light up a certain piece of a slide, highlight bullet points and segments of text and background, zoom in on a particular section of a slide, crop a single object out of an image, etc. Open your PowerPoint presentation and go to the slide that contains the objects with which you’ll be working. Click to select the image. On the Picture Tools “Format” tab, click the “Picture Effects” button. (If you’re applying a shadow to text, that button will be named “Text Effects” instead.).

PowerPoint color themes are key to make your presentation look consistent and professional. Using theme colors correctly also makes it easy to change colors and branding later. And understanding how they work means that you can avoid the annoying way that slides change and get messed up when you copy them from one deck to another. Keep scrolling to find out how you can create your own color theme in PowerPoint, and apply it across Office.

Watch my video tutorial for the full Technicolor demonstration, or read on for the analogue version with extra bonus tips.

First up, what is a PowerPoint color theme? The color theme sets the colors you find in the PowerPoint color palette, under the fill color or text color options. The main colors are set by you, and then PowerPoint creates the various shades underneath each one.

Set PowerPoint theme colors

How do you change theme colors in PowerPoint? To choose your color theme, go to the Design tab on the ribbon, and under Variants, select Colors, which will show you a range of options built into PowerPoint.

If you don’t want any of the pre-set color themes, you can choose the Customize Colors option down at the bottom of the list, which brings up a pop-up box that allows you to alter any of the colors. Select any of the color scheme options, and then More Colors at the bottom, which allows you to choose anything from the color wheel, or input your own RGB values, which may be useful if you want to use your brand colors in your presentation.

Once you’ve chosen the colors you want, you can save the theme with any name you like. That saved theme can be applied to any other PowerPoint deck, but will also be accessible across all Office programs, so you can set the same color themes in Word, Excel, or Outlook.

In Word, go to the Design tab on the ribbon, then Colors, just to the right of centre.
In Excel, go to the Page Layout tab in the ribbon, and you’ll find Colors on the far left.
In Outlook, compose a new message, then go to the Options tab on the ribbon, with Colors also on the far left.

You’ve got to love the way the same thing is hidden in so many different places! Maybe they’re like horcruxes, or something?

If you’ve downloaded BrightCarbon’s very own free PowerPoint add-in BrightSlide it is even simpler to set theme colors. Head to the BrightSlide tab and under the File &Master section select Theme Colors. The Theme Color editor will appear allowing you to set colors based on HEX, RGB or HSL values or using a color picker. It also give you a live preview of the palette and allows you to import and edit custom colors.

There are three categories of color to select in your theme:

Accent colors: The six Accent colors are the ones that are most useful in the PowerPoint color scheme. These are the main colors you’ll use in your presentation, and all Charts and SmartArt will be created using these colors by default.

Text/Background colors: The four options here don’t have to be dark and light, as the name suggests, but it’s recommended, as PowerPoint will use these colors as the background color for charts, and the text color for labels, assuming that you’ve chosen dark and light colors. It’s changing these to colors that are too dark or too light that can cause problems with poor contrast ratios, so try to keep them light and dark colors as appropriate, which will help with your overall PowerPoint color scheme effectiveness and accessibility. You’ll also be able to access these four colors in the theme colors menus.

PowerPoint hyperlink color: If you want to choose a special PowerPoint hyperlink color, and a color for links that have been clicked, you can, but the colors won’t appear in the theme color menus anywhere, so don’t think you can sneak another two colors into the PowerPoint color palette for general use.

PowerPoint color picker

Selecting specific RGB custom colors can be tricky, but using a color picker really helps – either to ensure you’re perfectly matching your brand colors, or picking colors from an image, webpage, or document that you like. A color picker tool will provide the precise RGB value for any color you can find, which you can then input to create your new presentation color scheme. There’s the PowerPoint color picker – built into the program – available from Office 2013 and later, which you can find by selecting an object (anything works for this), then going to the Home tab on the ribbon, over to Shape Fill on the right-hand side, and then selecting the Eyedropper option half way down the menu. Irritatingly, this PowerPoint color picker only works to pick colors within the PowerPoint slide window, so if you have an object on the slide already (like a logo), or can paste an image into it, then it’s fine.

Text Drop Shadow On Powerpoint For Mac Download

If not, there are plenty of great separate color picker tools that will allow you to pick up the RGB value of any color on your screen. There are loads of them, from incredibly feature-laden, to super simple pick a color, get an RGB code. Simple generally works for me, so things like Pixie and Color Cop are both good.

Theme vs standard vs custom colors

Now that you’ve set your theme colors, use them. Consistent use of the same family of colors makes your presentation look better and not too garish, which your audience and branding department will thank you for. It also means, as mentioned before, that if you change the theme colors, then all your content will change automatically to match. Not just on a single slide, but through your entire presentation. So if you change brand, or need to repurpose slides to fit a different theme, say for a conference, using the main theme colors, and all the various shades, will save you a lot of time.

If you copy and paste your slides into a different deck, with a different presentation color scheme, then your slides will also change to match the new PowerPoint color scheme, making everything consistent, with no additional effort. Incidentally, if you’ve ever copied slides into a new deck and wondered why everything has changed, this is why.

The standard colors are different to the PowerPoint theme colors, in that they’re fixed, and won’t change automatically when you apply a new theme or copy slides into a new deck. This can be advantageous. Say you want to use color to convey meaning – using red for negative and green for positive is a common combination. Here, you’d want to use the standard colors, rather than theme colors, as the colors won’t change, and your meaning won’t get lost if things alter in the future.

The same is true with custom colors. Sometimes you may want to add a specific color into the slide. This might reflect another brand in the deck for instance. In any of the color menus