Duplicate Slides in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Duplicating slides is a capability that is often underutilized because its practical value is not always immediately apparent. A common initial reaction is to ask, “Why would anyone need to duplicate slides?” In reality, slide duplication serves several practical purposes in the presentation development process. For example, you may want to:

1. Duplicate a slide so that you can experiment or make significant changes while keeping a safe copy of the original.
2. Create a new slide based on an existing slide, allowing you to retain the same structure, layout, and design elements.
3. Reuse the same slide at multiple points within a presentation when the content needs to be revisited or reinforced.
4. Produce a variation of an existing chart or diagram by duplicating the slide and making minor edits. This approach that is often faster and more efficient than recreating the chart or diagram from scratch.
5. Duplicate a slide to test different headlines, visuals, or layouts without losing the original version.

Consultants and trainers often duplicate slides and adjust the messaging, data, or examples for different clients or audience groups. Duplicating an existing slide preserves fonts, alignment, animations, and object formatting. This approach may help create a new slide, while maintaining visual consistency throughout the deck. Presenters sometimes duplicate slides and gradually add or remove elements to create progressive builds without relying on complex animations. A slide with a useful layout or visual structure can be duplicated and reused as a template for new content later in the presentation.

In practice, slide duplication is one of the simplest ways to accelerate slide production while maintaining consistency and flexibility in a presentation. Regardless of the underlying need, duplicating slides in Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 for Windows is a straightforward process. Slides can be duplicated easily from either the Slides Pane in Normal view or through Slide Sorter View.

Duplicating Slides within Slides Pane

Open your presentation and select the slide(s) to be duplicated within the Slides Pane. You can see that we have selected two slides, highlighted in red within Figure 1, below.

Figure 1: Slides to be duplicated selected within the Slides Pane

You can now duplicate selected slide(s), following any of these four ways:

1. Use the Ctrl + D keyboard shortcut. This action will duplicate the selected slide/slides and place them right below the selection.
   

   PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts

   Do you want more keyboard shortcuts?

   Explore our PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts and Sequences Ebook that is updated for all PowerPoint versions.

2. With the slides selected, click the down-arrow within the New Slide button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below. Within the resultant drop-down menu, select the Duplicate Selected Slides option, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Duplicate Selected Slides option
3. Right-click the selected slide (or slides) to bring up a contextual menu, as shown in Figure 3, below. Within this contextual menu, select the Duplicate Slide option, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Duplicate Slide option within the right-click contextual menu
4. Hold down the selected slide/slides and then drag within the Slides Pane to the location where you want to place the duplicated slides. Don't let go of your hold yet and press the Ctrl key so that your cursor shows a plus sign while Ctrl + dragging, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4, below. Then, release the mouse button to place the duplicate slide in the new place.
5. 
   Figure 4: Ctrl+drag the slides to duplicate within Slides Pane

Save your presentation often.

Duplicating Slides within Slide Sorter View

Change the view to Slide Sorter and select the slide or slides to be duplicated, as shown in Figure 5, below.

Figure 5: Slides to be duplicated selected within the Slide Sorter view

You can now duplicate the selected slide(s) using any of the following three methods:

1. Use the Ctrl + D keyboard shortcut to quickly duplicate the selected slide(s). The duplicated slides are automatically inserted immediately adjacent to the original selection, maintaining their position within the sequence.
2. With the slides selected, click the down-arrow within the New Slide button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 6, below. Within the resultant drop-down menu, select the Duplicate Selected Slides option, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 6.
3. 
   Figure 6: Duplicate Selected Slides option
3. Hold down the Ctrl key and drag the selected slide/slides to the new area within Slide Sorter view, where you want to place the duplicated slides, as shown in Figure 7, below. Notice that your cursor will show a plus sign while Ctrl + dragging, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 7. The duplicate slide gets dragged along.
4. 
   Figure 7: Ctrl+drag the slides to duplicate in Slide Sorter view

Change the view of your presentation to Normal and also save your presentation.