Looking for Shortcuts in PowerPoint? Look No Further!

Unlike Microsoft Word and Excel, PowerPoint does not give you keyboard shortcuts, which can be annoying at best. Keyboard shortcuts make your day just a little bit easier and programs just a little bit less time consuming to work with.

Since time is one of those things that people always seem to need more of, and you can never get it back once you've lost it, time is kind of a premium (especially, if you plan on maintaining your position as the office Wonder Woman or Superman). You need time to perform those everyday tiny miracles, like un-jamming the copier, organizing all the company meetings, or just saving that bus full of orphans from falling off a cliff.

A great way to recoup some of that time would be to put the keyboard shortcuts back in PowerPoint, that way you could save yourself from navigating through the menus with the mouse.

Of course, right now you think I'm mad. Or maybe you think I want you to lobby the makers of Office to give you an update with the desired features. No, no, my solution is much easier than that. Unlike the ideas above, it will work for even the least technical of you and won't require changing the minds of those Microsoft folks.

My solution is called PowerPoint Shortcut Tools 2.0 and it can help you add in the familiar keyboard shortcuts that make your life so much easier and more efficient. This program can help you to:

• Create perfect alignment between objects in your PowerPoint presentation without having to judge it manually. Options include top, bottom, left, right, center, as well as options relative to other objects.

• Insert custom shapes and text boxes including rectangles, squares, circles and lines.

• Group objects, like you would in Microsoft Publisher, to apply effects as a unit or so you can move them around easily. You can also un-group and regroup objects if you need to change only one part of the grouping.

• Toggle the zoom in your slideshow, as well as the ability to print selected slides or even individual slides from your presentation. This feature can come in handy when the presentation is long and you only need part of it.

The program is free to try for 30 days, and you get the download online so you can try it immediately.  It works on XP and Vista, as well as with both Office 2003 and Office 2007, which means most of you (if not all of you) should be able to use this. Of course, there are people who don't like or use the keyboard shortcuts in the rest of Office. If you're one of those people, this software probably isn't for you.