Image Source: Copilot Create (you know we would never create something this cheesy, and our text would have parallel construction)
In our book, Presentation Pitfalls, we purposefully minimized our references to software to focus on the timeless presentation strategies we teach. We believe that strategy, story, and structure are the foundations of any great talk. However, we also recognize that the right tools can make it easier to get from writer’s block to brilliant content faster. If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t my software do this?” you’re not alone. Enterprising developers have created tools to do many of those things you wish PowerPoint or Google Slides could do. In this article, we highlight the add-ins, extensions, and online tools that we love.
The Power of Add-ins
Using specialized add-ins provides four major advantages for busy professionals:
- They save time: Tasks that used to take hours of manual adjustment now take a few clicks.
- They make it easier to create engaging content: They provide access to professional graphics and diagrams that move beyond the dreaded wall of text.
- They help create consistency: They allow you to quickly standardize styles, fonts, and alignments across dozens of slides.
- They find and fix issues you can’t see: Several tools have cleanup functions that identify issues like empty placeholders, “ghost boxes,” off-slide objects, and missing slide numbers.
Essential Tools for PowerPoint and Google Slides
Here is a list of the tools we featured in the Presentation Pitfalls, with links to the tools and their creators’ LinkedIn pages. Most of these developers are active on LinkedIn. Follow them for presentation tips and tool updates.
NOTE: We’ve done our best to include the latest link for each of the tools and the developer. However, they change frequently, and if a link doesn’t work, you should be able to find the tool using your search engine or AI of choice.
PowerPoint Add-ins
- BrightSlide (BrightCarbon): This tool is a powerhouse for layout and animation. It allows you to match size, format, and animations across shapes and tables instantly. Functions like “Align to First” and “Distribute to Grid” ensure your slide objects are perfectly placed.
- Build-a-Graphic (Mike Parkinson): This tool provides over 10,000 editable professional graphics. It is designed to help you transform plain, text-heavy slides into polished, visually engaging designs like infographics.
- Diagrammer (Duarte): A fantastic free tool that offers over 4,000 PowerPoint-ready diagrams. They are organized by relationship type (e.g., “Flow” or “Hierarchy”) and serve as an inspiration board for illustrating complex concepts.
- Power-user (Power-user): This add-in features a “pipette” that acts like an advanced format painter. It allows you to selectively apply background colors, font sizes, or even specific positions to objects across multiple slides.
- Slidewise (Neuxpower): This is essentially an audit tool for your deck. It identifies inconsistent fonts, empty placeholders, and hidden objects that might be bloating your file size or “infecting” your standard template.
- SPICE (SpiceMySlide): We love this for its automated agenda and bumper slide tool. It also automates footnote numbering and creates a summary bibliography slide, and includes fully customizable maps.
- Think-cell (Think-Cell Software): The gold standard for building complex charts. It uses a drag-and-drop interface and automates complex elements such as difference arrows, scale breaks, and Gantt charts.
- THOR (PPTools): Created by Steve Rindsberg, this tool makes it easy to put common elements—like logos or tombstones—in the same location across every slide in your deck.
- ToolsToo Pro (ToolsToo): With over 130 tools, this add-in is incredibly versatile. It allows you to add shapes to groups without ruining animations and extract all your slide notes into a Microsoft Word document.
Google Slides Extensions
- Insert Icons for Slides (Scriptit): Gives you access to over 1,800 icons with transparent backgrounds that can be customized to any color.
- SlidesPro (Slidespo.io): Adds a convenient toolbar for quick access to color management, layout, and alignment, along with tools for inserting maps and graphs.
- Slides Toolbox (Dawent): This streamlines repetitive tasks like batch text editing, table-of-contents creation, and bulk removal of empty text boxes.
Bonus Tool: StreamAlive
Since we published the book, we’ve discovered StreamAlive, a tool that adds real-time audience interaction to Zoom, PowerPoint, and in-person sessions by turning the meeting chat into a participation channel. Because it relies on the existing chat window, virtual attendees don’t need to open a separate app or use their phones. The tool includes interactive elements, such as map-based check-ins, polls, and a chat message cascade, which can be summarized using AI. It also offers a wheel of names for random selection based on chat responders and a word cloud generator that can convert the final cloud into a representative image using AI.
Closing Thoughts
Please note that most of these tools do more than we could describe here. Most of them have a deep feature set designed to address specific “Pitfalls” that presenters face every day.
We also know that IT shops typically don’t make add-ins available without justification. If you are looking to bring these into your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out. We know many of the developers personally and are happy to make connections for you to help provide the context your technology department might need.
What are your go-to tools for slide design? Do you have a favorite function from the tools we listed, or is there a great add-in we missed? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Portions of this article first appeared in Presentation Pitfalls.