Windows PowerPoint shortcuts on a Mac

On Windows, pressing Alt puts a letter on every tab and button of PowerPoint's ribbon. PowerPoint for Mac has no such letters. RibbonKeys draws them: tap Option, and the letters of PowerPoint for Windows appear over the ribbon. Type them, and the button is pressed.

How it works in PowerPoint

1. Tap ⌥

   With PowerPoint in front, tap the Option key by itself. Every tab gets its letter: H Home, N Insert, G Design, K Transitions, A Animations, S Slide Show, P Record, R Review and W View.

2. Type the tab's letter

   The tab opens and every control on it gets its letters. A letter you have typed turns faint, and the letters it rules out are dimmed. The last letter presses the button: S B plays the slide show from the start, W I switches to Slide Sorter.

3. Type on, or step back

   A button that opens a menu gives its items letters too, and so does each submenu: H G opens Arrange, A its Align menu, and C aligns the selected shapes to the centre. Esc steps back one level. Another tap on ⌥, or a click, ends the sequence.

Holding ⌥ down with the first letter starts a sequence too, as Alt does on Windows, except while the keyboard is in a text field, where ⌥ goes on typing accents and symbols. A tap on ⌥ by itself always starts one.

Sequences in PowerPoint

• ⌥ H I D Duplicate Slide
• ⌥ H L Layout
• ⌥ H G G Group
• ⌥ H G A C Align to Centre
• ⌥ N P P Picture from File…
• ⌥ N V F Video from File…
• ⌥ K L Apply to All
• ⌥ A C Animation Pane
• ⌥ S B Play from Start
• ⌥ S C Play from Current Slide
• ⌥ S H Hide Slide
• ⌥ W M Slide Master

Every letter of every tab is on the full list of PowerPoint shortcuts, generated from the app's own tables.

What to know

• Galleries stay on the arrow keys. As on Windows, a gallery or a palette has no letter for each item. H F C opens Font Colour, and the arrow keys and Return pick a colour.
• A narrow window. When the window is too narrow for a group, PowerPoint folds it into one button. RibbonKeys gives that button its Windows letters with a Z, such as H Z S for the Slides group, and the tab's own letters then apply inside it.
• Only the ribbon. PowerPoint's dialogs and its menu bar get no letters, and neither do the tabs PowerPoint adds for what is selected, such as those for a shape or a picture. The Ctrl+U switch is for Excel only.
• Draw. The Draw tab has its letters in the tables, J I, and has not been tested on a live ribbon yet.
• What was checked. The letters were seen on the live ribbon of a standard presentation for Home, Insert, Design, Transitions, Animations, Slide Show, Record, Review and View, and on the menus their buttons open.

The same licence

One licence covers PowerPoint, Excel and Word on the same Mac. In Excel, RibbonKeys also gives dialogs their letters and takes the menu keys of Excel 2003: see Windows Excel shortcuts on a Mac. Word works as PowerPoint does: see Windows Word shortcuts on a Mac. Questions about the licence, working offline, privacy and updates are answered on the questions page.

Free for 7 days, with no account and no card. After that €3.99 a month or €59.99 once, including VAT.
Needs macOS 13 or later and PowerPoint for Mac.

Every PowerPoint shortcut · RibbonKeys