You can copy and paste content from most Windows applications into PowerPoint

There are two ways you can quickly copy text formatting and paste it in Microsoft PowerPoint. If you only want to copy the formatting of the text in a PowerPoint presentation without actually copying the text itself, you can use the Format Painter. This is a useful option when you want to use the same formatting on one slide or text box without having to create a new theme. If you want to copy both text and its formatting, you can use the Keep Source Formatting option.

Using the Format Painter

  1. Highlight the text that has the formatting you want to copy by dragging the cursor over it. Note that if you have applied 3D effects or the Warp Transform effect to the text and want to copy the effect, select the entire shape and not just the text.

  2. Locate the "Format Painter," which is located in the Clipboard group in the ribbon's Home tab.

  3. Single-click the "Format Painter" if you want to apply the copied formatting only once. Double-click the "Format Painter" If you want to apply the formatting to multiple objects. The cursor changes to a paintbrush symbol.

  4. Drag the tool across the text you want to format. The Format Painter will apply the copied formatting to the text. Note that the Format Painter only copies text formatting such as color, font and size. It does not effect paragraph formatting like spacing or indents.

  5. Press "Esc" on the keyboard or click the "Format Painter" if you were copying the formatting to multiple text strings. This closes the Format Painter.

Copying Text and Its Formatting

  1. Highlight the text in PowerPoint or another application you want to copy. Press "Ctrl-C" to copy it.

  2. Place the cursor where you want the the text to appear.

  3. Click the "Home" tab and then click the "Arrow" beneath the Paste icon. A selection of paste options appears in a drop-down menu.

  4. Select "Keep Source Formatting." The text is pasted with the formatting it had from the copied source.

“I’m absolutely blown away by your beta! It’s better than I could have ever imagined. From the color changing throughout the presentation, how easy, fast, and intuitive it is to create wonderful presentations, to the great 2 window presentation-view. Also, the top-notch design!” –⁠Rasmus Hermann Peters

“Just want to say thank you for your awesome work. iA presenter is great software and I’m so happy that you developed it!” –⁠Vsevolod Poliakov

“I just want to say thank you for an amazing piece of software. I normally use Keynote for slide presentations. I am a teacher and putting together slides is usually fairly time-consuming. But since I do work with markdown files, and having the ability to import a markdown file and easily convert it into slides has been a game changer. It is quicker and easy to use. The various styles work well for me.” –⁠Michael d’Offay

“I find the tool incredibly efficient, and it allows me to prepare a presentation on the fly. This is truly a new way to approach presentations. I’m currently exporting my Keynote, PowerPoint, and Google Slide presentations as PDF and using the PDF in iA Presenter. Any ideas when we will be able to purchase version 1? ” –⁠Raul Rios

“Keep up the improvements. This is a fantastic tool.” –⁠Darrell Estabrook

“Overall, congratulations. I think you are onto something with this. Once I downloaded the app, I spent five days in the mornings to wrap my head around iA Presenter. Those were the silent early hours before kicking off my day job, and it was around 5 hours in total. I don’t know if you would consider that being fast or slow. I can say I enjoyed those hours, It was a distraction-free time, and I was able to dive into the topic. I very much enjoyed it to work with your app. It was absolutely worth investing the time in. I think. Generally, one would be able to master iA Presenter from a tool perspective much faster than PowerPoint or Keynote (if you already know Markdown, you are really quick on speed).”,Shared a great presentation about the key points of Presenter.” –⁠Ulf Schneider

“Thanks for sharing this idea with me. The app is fantastic, I was looking for that kind app. The app is easy to use and user-friendly. Right off the bat you want to create something. Great idea.” –⁠Andrzej Stasiak

“I’ll give my third talk using @iAPresenter tomorrow. And I just have to say it, I love this piece of software.” –⁠Daniel Hauck

“iA Presenter is absolutely incredible. A presentation design app that teaches you how to present? That handles the layout for you? It is the most inspired software thing I’ve touched since iA Writer.” –⁠Christian Alden Jacobs

“Sworn to secrecy about its contents, but I have been using the beta of @iAPresenter for only about 15 minutes and it already makes all other presentation software look incomprehensibly awful. You will wonder how you ever survived. Go sign up for the beta.” –⁠David Singerman

“I’ve been using it for a while and it’s a total game changer for me. @iA team is doing an amazing job.” –⁠Ahmet Alphan Sabancı

“Just got my weekly report done in under 10 mins with @iAPresenter. All I needed to do was copy my research log into the app and make adjustments to make them presentable. Wonderful!” –⁠Doppio

“I know you don’t want this feedback… But IA Presenter is even better than I thought! It was a long time ago since I found software that resonated with me as much as IA Presenter. It is simply stunning, and it makes me directly want to start writing stories. I promise to get back with some more actionable feedback – but I just wanted to say that it is love at first sight. Thank you for this – you’re brilliant!” –⁠Erik Näslund

“I think the basic idea of iA Presenter—separating what one wants to say from what one wants to show—is just brilliant.” –⁠Tim Ludwig

“Honestly, so far it looks like a really great offering in the presentation app space. My initial reaction is this is exactly what iA would do for presentations.” –⁠Daniel Skead

“You broke the mold with iA Writer (I was a very early adopter) and you’ve done it again with iA Presenter. It’s fantastic. –⁠Gareth Smith

“I will not give you compliments, I will say just one word: WOW” –⁠Nick WB

“This is unbelievable — exactly what I’ve needed, bouncing between Keynote and Impress.js over the last few years. I can’t wait to migrate my presentations into iA Presenter and build more of them over time.” –⁠Adam Pantanowitz

“Also, I want to add that I am very excited about this project. As a software engineer, I am used to doing work with text, and find it incredibly frustrating and slow to work with current presentation software. iA Presenter was enjoyable and fast to use. It didn’t take long to convert existing content from my markdown notes into a presentation.” –⁠Cameron Fowler

“I’m totally on board with the paradigm shift you propose. As a designer, I hate having to design slides manually instead of a generative template. As an educator, I find it awkward having to start with the visual layout instead of the story. The app truly helped me to focus on the script and forget about individual slides.” –⁠Selçuk Balamir

“I would like to thank you for the closed beta of iA Presenter. The product is just wonderful. I LOVE IT! I’ll buy it DEFINITELY! It made me 2X or 3X more time efficient and design effective! My presentations end up looking beautiful, and the UI & markdown is so simple to use, as well as the onboarding that was a joy to read. Yesterday, I spent 6h on two presentations for my designer mentee, and I would most definitely spent minimally 10h by switching modes of writing, editing assets and wrapping that content into slides. You rock! It’s just so wonderful this product exists!” –⁠Ivan Čiš

“Especially for students who like to get lost in details or still have difficulties with freer forms of presentation, the iA Presenter may be an alternative in the learning process in the future. The app is also well suited for the quick development of simple presentations or the visualization of read texts.” –⁠Christian Vanell

“I’m also a working professor on the Beta, and using iA Presenter (while reporting a bug here and there) has changed the way I think about slides and handouts. And I’ve cut my preparation time in half.” –⁠John Holland

“I’m using presenter as my primary presentation software this semester—it’s been a good experience. (I’m a professor)” –⁠Gary Meacher

“Congratulations! A great tool: Fast, efficient, and beautiful. It works very well and intuitively, especially if you write the speech with iA writer. ” –⁠Andreas Hönger

“Using the incredible ease of #Markdown and its implementation by @iAPresenter for my courses now. Super fast slides, all the content (for the PDFs), but non of the clutter in the slides. Fantastic software!” –⁠Joachim K. Rennstich

“I am an event organizer and a volunteer at TEDxTorino. iA presenter is the most beautiful and reorganizing thing that has happened to me in recent years. Thank you for the wonderful design behind the product” –⁠Pierpaolo Alessio

“I just finished my first presentation, and I had to tell you how much I love this app. I’ve used Hyperdeck and Deckset, but so far Presenter is my favorite and exactly what I was looking for. Coming from Writer, I felt right at home authoring my presentation in Markdown. So many happy little UX moments – double tapping Enter to start a new slide, the way the cursor changes color for each slide, the dropdown menu to style images, and the easy-to-navigate tabs for Format / Media / Themes. Everything was exactly where I’d want it. And then, when I gave my first presentation – wow! I loved being able to use the up/down arrows to move through each talking point, and left/right to move through slides. The presenter notes are legible, with the colored left border making it easy to find my place. I was presenting remote, so being able to share the slideshow window but keep the presenter notes separate – perfect. Thanks so much for building this product. It’s rare to come across a product that so perfectly matches my ideal workflow. How about an email client next ;)?” –⁠Joshua Maccombs

“I didn’t appreciate how revolutionary your approach was until I read the opening paragraphs in your intro deck. What a tremendous insight, so obvious, yet nobody thought to do it.” –⁠Shahid Ahmad

“I used iA presenter this morning for the first time at work. I had put off preparing for a large all-day team meeting I was leading and came in early to scramble to get something prepared. Using iA Presenter was such a game changer for me and my workflow. I already take all my notes in Markdown, and having the ability to use that as the foundation for generating a clean and minimalist presentation is incredible. I was also able to pair it with the use of DALL-E 2 to generate some custom artwork to elevate my message even further. My ability to put something together of such high caliber so fast was a bit mind blowing. And the teleprompter-like view during presenting is just the missing chef’s kiss most presentation software needed. I feel like I’ve just experienced a glimpse into what the future looks like in this whole space thanks to iA Presenter. I want to thank you very much for putting in the effort to create it and I’m very excited to purchase it when it reaches 1.0. I’m going to use the hell out of it. It’s a true game changer.” –⁠Cyrus Lopez

“This app is a gamechanger… can’t wait for the final version.” –⁠Moses Samaan

“There’s something very powerful about the simplicity and content-first approach. iA Writer user here since 2011. At first I was hesitant, thinking I need so much customization in a pitch deck that no way Presenter would cut it. But, I decided to give it a try anyway. And I was surprised and blown away by how much quicker I got my deck done! In pitch.com (which I started using last year instead of Keynote due to better templates and ease of moving things around), it was taking me around 30-40 mins to just make 1-2 slides. I didn’t realize until using iA Presenter how much the interface gets in the way in other presentation tools. In iA Presenter, in the same amount of time, I had most of my deck done. The inline text that’s only visible to me is functional to me in two ways: 1) it helps me gather my internal thoughts when I’m going to be presenting this; 2) I can even add “do it later” type annotations to aid the process e.g. “TODO: find a stat for this””; 3) This is how I actually start any process.. by writing stuff down in markdown, and Presenter makes it a lot faster to go from that step 1 to the final step.. I feel this is a game-changer.” –⁠Siddharth Jha

“Wow! Presenter is a joy to use. It aids in the honing of thought and how to present thought. Thank you! You have done for presenting what you did for writing — freed the tool to be a flow of thought tool, both for the presenter and for the participants. Without the “”need”” to work around the “”notes”” failure of PowerPoint et al by sneaking extra content on slides as reminders, the focused words on the slide create interest rather than yawns, returning curiosity and intrigue to presentations. Again, thank you!” –⁠Deacon Patrick

“Such a great app! It is always a true pleasure to use an opinionated “”not for all”” software!” –⁠Eugene Kaznacheev

“I am impressed with the app! The demotion of slide visuals to second-class citizen is powerful. It was fun to create a presentation because I did not spend time worrying about bullet-point styles and color schemes. I focused on the information I wanted to convey. I have not felt relief like this since first opening iA Writer. :)”–⁠Steve Emhof

“Wow. Couldn’t stop playing with it – how long has it been since that happened to me upon installing a new app? A really new paradigm for presentation. Already I am thinking about using iA Presenter for a public talk I’ll have to give in 10 days time. ” –⁠Busch, Andreas

“Great app, just what I’ve been wanting for so long! Instant purchase once it’s out.” –⁠Arturo Goicochea

“Presenter looks like exactly what I was looking for. It’s just amazing, easy to use and beautiful in the resulting presentation. ” –⁠Stefan Gliesche

Jordan J. Lloyd: “This is an instant-buy for me when it’s out on general release. I use iA Writer every day so integrating Presenter’s workflow will be straightforward. It’s an absolutely fantastic, intuitive workflow.” –⁠Jordan J. Lloyd

“I’ve made a couple of presentation with iA Presenter and, after some time to understand the basics, I’m very impressed, it’s a great tool!” –⁠Claudio Marconato

“Yet another great designed product from iA :)” –⁠Fabio Sirna

I’ve just been given access to the Beta and it’s amazing. Thank you for helping to revolutionise how I write and use presentations.” –⁠Mark Ainsworth

“I think about and talk a lot about digital ecosystems in my work. I pay attention to the ways in which people become attached to certain devices, certain workflows, certain ecosystems. In the context of the work of iA, this can be nutshelled into Microsoft Word v. Plain Text editors. We become passionately attached to systems we are familiar and comfortable with. With that context in mind, you needn’t convince me about the need for simplicity in presentation design. PowerPoint people spend far too much time fiddling with the look and not enough time thinking about their message. iA Presenter provides the rails on which a more thoughtful approach to presenting ideas becomes possible as the fiddling is removed. At first glance, I’m most attracted to the way that the editor is embedded with the presentation environment and I can see my script as I fashion the slides. That eliminates the extra step I currently need in my Deckset workflow. Since you don’t want praise, I’ll stop there.” –⁠John Holland

“Used Presenter for our board meeting last week. Was lovely and smooth. Felt much more confident and the autocue-like notes are a subtle shift but made a big difference to my stress levels. Take my money!!!” –⁠Stephen Hawkes

“By way of background, I am a reasonably experienced PowerPoint and Keynote user. Not a “ninja” class, but well above average. This may be more experience than your targeted users. I am deeply impressed by IA Presenter and the fundamentally change in the presentation-creation paradigm (yes, I know, an over-used expression). With Keynote and PowerPoint, the user is (usually) presented with a blank slate and immediately is obligated to throw words and objects into it. Because there is no linkage between presenter notes and the presentation, most rational presentation developers automatically start creating the typical “word salads” … oceans of grey in the words they feel they need to communicate the message to the audience. As it has no where else to go, it has to go into the slide. IA Presenter gives these users the permission to structure (or just copy & paste) what they actually want to say without fear of losing all of these elements, while encouraging them to minimize the “ink” in the deck. I love it. I also deeply appreciate that, by its nature, IA Presenter moves the casual user away from the typical abuse of non-alignment, clutter, inadequate breathing room, and other graphical atrocities. It does so without chiding or laying down gridlines.” –⁠Michael Whalen

“Then I’ll keep it short. It looks like someone took the time to (re)think how digital presenting should be, and it shows. I’d happily use this (next to iA Writer). The fundamentals feel right and the interface is intuitive. I can see a future in which I only keep Keynote to be compatible with those who create ‘legacy presentations’.” –⁠Charilaos Mulder

“Love using iA Writer with Presenter: Copy-paste, practice speak-edit (repeat often), add visuals. Great process for me. What a pleasure it is working with Information Architects! iA Presenter is a powerful product, one I thoroughly enjoy every time I use it. I’m delighted I was given the opportunity to enjoy its many benefits early in the going. Many thanks. I spend 60% of almost every day in iA Writer, and now, an increasing amount of time in iA Presenter using it to create videos that complement my blog. Best of luck in the next phase of your venture.” –⁠Douglas Garfield

“Im sitting here, in my office and thinking for last hour what just happened. I’m confused. At first I thought that Presenter is totally unnecessary – what kind of problems it’s solves? We already have Keynote (and PowerPoint, but, you know…). Then I downloaded few examples and everything started to be clear. It’s so great idea, markdown and presentation, two windows, one for my audience, one just for me. It’s so great.” –⁠Michał Żelazny

“It helps me to focus the things what I really want to say. Also, the theme design can help me to create a beautiful ppt without lots of work.” –⁠Teabyii

“It’s safe to say that I was an early iA Writer adopter—it’s always been great, I use it every day for years now. But this iA Presenter, I wasn’t sure, you know, am I ever going to need this? One thing I know for sure is that I need fewer apps, not more. I don’t use PowerPoint (thank God) and I could always use Keynote, which is good enough, or even InDesign to put together a quick presentation (I use custom-made templates so it’s not super quick, but not slow). And yet, I kept an open mind. I opened the beta and saw that there was merit to it, you know, maybe. There is an opportunity to eat up some of the PowerPoint pie, I guess. But still wasn’t sure if I would ever use it. The other day, I had a presentation to make though, and shit hit the fan just before, quite literally. Long story short, I was left with half an hour to prepare my presentation! Luckily, I had jotted down the structure on iA Writer on my phone while buying groceries. Yes, multitasking is bad, but, you’ve got to protect your family. I came back, put that structure in iA Presenter, and added a bunch of images—I could only do a quick but super impressyves sketch, all the other images were spitted out by Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. Yes, that’s cheating. Anyway, half an hour later I had a 50 pages presentation with video, animation, and rich visuals. IA Presenter saved the day, I’m sold.” –⁠Yves Capelle

“I wish I could give some constructive feedback about the app, but it simply works. Sure, there were a couple of freezes and crashed along the way, but I think you’ve covered that. I gave my first live in-person presentation yesterday in Hamburg. I don’t think I looked at the wall once, and I said what I wanted to say.” –⁠Jonathan Irons

“Now I have been using iA Presenter for two weeks. You have a fantastic approach to presentation which has made me rethink my approach. I am not there 100% yet, still use powerpoint for those ”important data slides” but for everything else! And it has been a wow factor. Instead of thinking about format – what do I actually want to say? So now I go around thinking for two hours about ”what” and then make the presentation in 10 minutes. So – great job! I think you have made a really interesting app here. Thanks!!” –⁠Filip Björnstjerna

“iA Presenter i such a great and helpful companion in my daily work as an educator.” –⁠Håkan Karlsson

“I haven’t used the software as much as I would’ve liked, since I don’t usually get to make presentations at work, but the times I got to use it were very much revelatory. I really like it when a new tool makes me think about my whole process, and presentations are something I use to enjoy giving, but not making. I think most of my latest presentations in university and work were supposed to be a team effort, and by that I mean many people discuss the major beats and the one who’s most proficient a PowerPoint or Keynote (mostly me) built it and made it pop. Of course this was frustrating as we mostly prepared to what we wanted to show on the projector, but not exactly what we wanted so say. In Presenter I have to make the speech first, and that really makes a lot of sense. That made me think about why I didn’t do that before, and I believe the answer is time. Writing a speech first and then making the PowerPoint feels like double work, and the basic promise of Presenter fixes that. Sadly, the first time I used it I still stuck to my old habits. Namely improvising and going off the script. But those are things I should improve by myself. I am simply glad that that this piece of software made me more mindful of it. I think this is more gratitude than feedback, but I felt I should write this. I think what you’re building is amazing. The visuals tab is very useful, and being able to add web images via URL instead of copying them is a nice solution to not having to deal with those files being stuck inside the pptx. The export options are very complete, and I love that you can get a text document with the pictures. I would definitely recommend this to my friends, and especially those who are involved in teaching. I remember one of my favorite teachers using Beamer for the presentations and the handoffs being 200-pages PDF files with the figures but not the speech. I bet that if he had Presenter 8 years it would have been easier for us as his students. If there’s one thing I worry about, is sending files to people who don’t use this software. When I use iA Writer I export to Word and that’s that. However, it makes me sad that I won’t be able to work on Presenter if the expected output is a .pptx file. In the end, that is not a failing of the software but the reality of the world, both academic and in the workplace. I can’t wait for the full release.” –⁠Enrique Araujo

“Congratulations! A great tool: Fast, efficient and beautiful. It works very well and intuitively, especially if you write the speech with iA writer. I tried to summarise Steven Pressfield’s book: Do the work. It’s great and efficient (also with the automatic arrangement), but I sometimes wanted to arrange it a little differently. I have attached the presentation; in slide 1 I would like to have the image reduced and placed differently. In slide 12, the thematic blocks are difficult for the viewer to allocate (but maybe I’m doing something wrong). Hopefully the input is usable; and anyway – the program is fantastic!” –⁠Andreas Hönger

“A tool that enables just enough and then gets out of the way. I am definitely a fan of the new @iAPresenter.” –⁠Árni Daníelsson

“I love that @iAPresenter is luring me into doing slides differently in a subtle, tempting way. Less is more is quite easy to say but building the tools for it is another story. Highly recommended if you’re done with Powerpoint et al.” –⁠Fabian Mohr

“Using the incredible ease of #Markdown and its implementation by @iAPresenter for my courses now. Super fast slides, all the content (for the PDFs), but non of the clutter in the slides. Fantastic software!” –⁠Joachim K. Rennstich

“First thought: this is a game changer in terms of how I will write my presentations from now on. Or it is the tool I always wanted but … Powerpoint. Of course you know. So I am excited and can’t wait to use it (just like iA Writer I guess)” –⁠Sven Ehmann

Can you copy and paste content from most Windows applications into PowerPoint?

Link or embed content copied from another program In a program other than PowerPoint, select and copy the information that you want to insert as an object. In PowerPoint, click where you want the object to appear. On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the arrow below Paste, and then click Paste Special.

Why can't I copy and paste in PowerPoint?

If you get a message indicating No clipboard access when you attempt to copy or paste, it is likely that your browser is blocking sites from accessing the clipboard, also known as Cut-Copy-Paste (CCP) functionality.