Quick Access Toolbar in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

Soon after a power user installs a new application, he or she wants to customize their menus and toolbars so that their most often used features are accessible with fewer clicks, or even custom keyboard shortcuts. And even if you are not a power user, you should explore this very useful option that we explain in this tutorial, this will make your tasks easier, and quicker.

While PowerPoint's recent versions, including the new PowerPoint 2013 on Windows have almost no menus and toolbars, they do have a single toolbar called the Quick Access Toolbar. Almost everyone who uses this toolbar just calls it the QAT, and that's the name we will use for the rest of this tutorial. The QAT's raison d'être is customization, and all options available in the QAT may be available elsewhere. However, populating the QAT with your favorite commands is a great way to have them more easily accessible.

By default, the QAT can be found right above the File menu and the rest of the Ribbon tabs, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1. Also, the default commands you can find within QAT are Save, Undo, Redo, Start from Beginning and Touch/Mouse Mode. You can add many more of your often used commands to the QAT.

Figure 1: Quick Access Toolbar (or QAT)

You can continue adding more commands to your QAT through customization. As you can see in Figure 1, the area where the QAT is placed is not too large enough to hold more than a few commands, when you have more commands added to the QAT, you'll have to click the double arrow button placed on its right (highlighted in red within Figure 2, below) to see them. This brings up a drop-down menu showing these extra commands, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: More commands on the QAT

As you can see, this entails an extra click and is not such an elegant solution. Fortunately, you can place the QAT under the Ribbon tabs so that it has more screen estate, and can thus sport more commands. To do that, right-click anywhere on your QAT to bring up a contextual menu (see Figure 3, below). Within this menu, select the Show Quick Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon option.

Figure 3: Quick Access Toolbar Below the Ribbon option

This places your QAT below the Ribbon tabs, as shown in Figure 4, below.

Figure 4: QAT relocated below the Ribbon tabs

You can add and remove commands on the QAT, learn how to do that in our Customize Quick Access Toolbar in PowerPoint 2013 tutorial.