Create professional slide layouts with PowerPoint Designer

7/2/2019

PowerPoint Designer improves slides for Office 365 subscribers by automatically generating design ideas to choose from.

While you're putting content on a slide, Designer works in the background to match that content to professionally designed layouts.

This is a subscriber-only, Office 365 feature. If you don't see the Design Ideas   button, or you don't see certain features described on this page, read Requirements below for more details.

Get design ideas

1. Ask for design ideas any time by choosing Design > Design Ideas   on the ribbon.

2. The first time you try out PowerPoint Designer, it may ask your permission to get design ideas for you. If you want to use Designer, select Turn on.

   To learn more, see the Microsoft Privacy Statement.

   Once you've turned on "connected experiences," PowerPoint automatically shows you design ideas when you're creating your slides. Over time PowerPoint learns from your experience using design ideas and shows you design ideas at the appropriate time. 

   

3. Scroll through the suggestions in the Design Ideas pane on the right side of the window.

4. Click to select the design you want, or else close the window. If you select one of the ideas, your slide is changed accordingly.

   You can also select another idea from the pane or go back to your original slide design: Press Ctrl+Z to undo a design change you've just selected.

What Designer gives you:

A title-slide photo and a design scheme

When you start a blank presentation and enter words on the slide, Design Ideas recommends high-quality photos that reflect the slide text, plus a design scheme with colors that complement the photograph you choose. All the slides in the presentation will fit together visually.

Professional layouts

PowerPoint Designer detects pictures, charts, or tables on a slide and gives you several suggestions for arranging them in a cohesive, attractive layout.

More visuals, less text

Too much text on your slide? Designer can turn text such as lists, processes, or timelines into an easily readable graphic.

Bulleted lists get suggestions for an icon to accompany each bullet item. If you don't like a suggested icon, just select it and use our on-the-spot replacement button:

Illustrations

PowerPoint Designer watches for key terms and concepts that it has illustrations for, and it shows you those illustrations in various layouts. The Illustrations are from the Office 365 icons library.

Design Ideas and "ink"

(Only for Office 365 subscribers) PowerPoint Designer recognizes when you draw or write with ink, and it incorporates that content into the design ideas it shows you.

Turn off PowerPoint Designer

If you don't want PowerPoint Designer to automatically offer suggestions:

1. On the File menu, click Options.

2. In the PowerPoint Options dialog box, click the General tab on the left, then scroll toward the bottom and clear the Automatically show me design ideas check box.