Keyboard shortcuts are a great way to save time and effort. Shortcut keys can help you bypass menus and carry out commands directly. In fact, when creating text-heavy presentations, it is often quite easy to do almost everything with the keyboard — instead of using the mouse. (You can save the mouse for drawing items.)

The only trick to keyboard shortcuts is memorizing them. Fortunately, you can access the complete list of keyboard shortcuts by using the Microsoft Office Assistant. In PowerPoint (or any of the other Office 2000 applications), just press F1 to display the Assistant. Type "shortcut keys" in the text box.

Here are some of the most useful PowerPoint shortcut keys:

Action	Shortcut Keys
Open a PowerPoint presentation	Ctrl + O
Insert a new slide	Ctrl + M
Copy	Ctrl + C
Paste	Ctrl + V
Save	Ctrl + S
Print	Ctrl + P
Bold	Ctrl + B
Italicize	Ctrl + I
Capitalize	Shift + F3
Apply subscript	Ctrl + = (Equal Sign)
Apply superscript	Ctrl + + (Plus Sign)
Find	Ctrl + F
Select all	Ctrl + A
Delete word	Ctrl + Backspace
Repeat last action	F4 or Ctrl + Y
Insert hyperlink	Ctrl + K
Promote paragraph	Alt + Shift + Left Arrow
Demote paragraph	Alt + Shift + Right Arrow
View guides	Ctrl + G
Make duplicate slide	Ctrl + D
Start slide show	F5