Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out a welcome function to Excel for Mac customers, lastly letting individuals view and edit a number of worksheets side-by-side, a functionality Home windows customers already had. Now, one other program within the 365 suite is getting a polish that you just may respect.

Microsoft is updating the feel and appear of placeholders in PowerPoint on each Home windows and Mac. In case you’re not acquainted, placeholders are the dotted containers on slides that maintain content material like textual content, pictures, or charts. They assist preserve every little thing organized and guarantee constant formatting throughout your presentation.

In response to Microsoft’s announcement, these placeholders are usually not simply getting a refreshed, extra fashionable look. They’re additionally designed to offer clearer steerage on the particular object you may insert. This appears aimed toward making it much more intuitive to construct out your slides utilizing the usual layouts.

A notable enchancment is how picture placeholders work. They now can help you decide from quite a lot of sources instantly inside the placeholder itself, making it simpler to search out and insert pictures with out further steps or navigating separate menus initially.

Right here is the way it works:

1. Open an present presentation in PowerPoint for Home windows or PowerPoint for Mac.
2. So as to add a picture, choose Insert > New Slide, after which choose a slide structure that features a picture placeholder.

3. Click on the Insert Image button, after which choose a picture supply within the dropdown menu.

4. Insert the picture you need.

5. So as to add SmartArt, choose Insert > New Slide, after which choose a slide structure to which you’ll be able to add SmartArt.
6. Choose the Insert SmartArt button, after which choose the SmartArt you need.

In case you depend on model templates, Microsoft suggests reviewing them to make sure they appear as anticipated with these refreshed placeholders. There’s a identified distinction that customers may encounter proper now:

As a result of this function isn’t but accessible in PowerPoint for the online, count on some variations when opening and viewing templates created utilizing the brand new placeholders on the internet.

This implies shows created with these up to date placeholders on the desktop functions may not render completely or present the total performance when considered within the browser model of PowerPoint.

These new placeholders can be found now for all Microsoft 365 customers operating PowerPoint on Home windows Model 2503 (Construct 18623.20178) or later, and on Mac Model 16.96 (Construct 25040711) or later. This replace seems to be usually accessible to common customers, not simply Insiders.