PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Inserting Slides from Other Slideshows

If you create a lot of PowerPoint slideshows, then you'll be happy to know there's an easy way to grab slides from one slideshow and put them into another. Taking slides from other PowerPoint slideshows is useful not just for reusing chunks of slideshows that you've put together yourself, but also for borrowing from presentations that other folks have created.

UP TO SPEED: Make the ^&$*@! Clipboard Go Away

Every time you cut, copy, or paste stuff on your slides, you're using the Office Clipboard—a fact that you may be unaware of until it slaps you in the face.

If you do a lot of cutting, copying, and pasting, then PowerPoint takes it upon itself to display the Clipboard pane, unceremoniously bumping your Slides pane out of the way and shrinking your workspace, which can be unnerving.

You'll find the Clipboard pane useful if, for example, you want to paste a line of text you copied two minutes ago into a new slide. You can grab the text and plunk it onto a slide even if you've cut and pasted other things in the meantime.

But most of the time, you'd probably rather have the screen space back. You can temporarily dismiss the clipboard by clicking the X in the upper-right corner, but it'll just pop up again.

To get the Clipboard to leave you alone until you summon it, head to the bottom of the Clipboard pane and click Options. Then, in the pop-up menu, turn off the checkbox next to Show Office Clipboard Automatically. Should you want to bring the Clipboard ...