Working with multiple presentations

PowerPoint 2016 2013 2010 2007
You usually work with only one presentation at a given time. But occasionally, you may need to open two or more presentations at once. E.g., to copy text or slides from one presentation to another.

To open another presentation, in the File tab, choose Open or click Ctrl+O and select the presentation.

When more than one presentation is open, you can switch among them by selecting the one you want to see from the taskbar in Windows. E.g.:

Windows PowerPoint 365

Alternatively, you can do one of the following:

   1.   On the View tab, in the Window group, click the Switch Windows button:

Switch Windows in PowerPoint 365

Select any open presentation from there:

Switch Windows in PowerPoint 365

   2.   Switch between open windows of all applications by:

  • holding down the Alt key and pressing Tab to browse thumbnails of open windows (Alt+Tab) - not just PowerPoint;
  • pressing Alt+Esc repeatedly to cycle through them - not just PowerPoint;
  • pressing Ctrl+F6 to switch between just PowerPoint presentations.

See also this tip in French: Travailler avec plusieurs présentations.

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How to copy slides to or from another presentation

How to copy slides to or from another presentation

If you work with multiple presentations or create a new version of an old presentation, copying some slides from one presentation to another is often necessary. You can select and copy all objects from the slide, but this doesn't work correctly because slide designs are different or for other reasons. Use the following steps to copy slides fast and easy, in one of two ways:
Open presentations

Open presentations

You can work with several presentations at the same time. To open a recently used presentation, you can use the Open pane, but the Open dialog box is your key to finding and retrieving presentations.
How to work with hidden slides

How to work with hidden slides

Sometimes you have no time to finish the slide or find at the last moment that it isn't important for this presentation. On this occasion, you can save your presentation to a different file, delete the slide, and use the backup file later. However, you will not have all the notes, highlights, and drawings you made during the presentation. Instead, you can hide the slide and have all the information in one place.

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