PowerPoint’s New Design Tools Make Better Slides Easier

PowerPoint’s New Design Tools Make Better Slides Easier

Microsoft PowerPoint is getting new design options aimed at making attractive presentations easier to build. Fresh SmartArt choices, themes and design improvements give you more ways to turn ordinary information into polished slides while spending less time arranging everything yourself.

By Rodger Mansfield, Technology Editor

October 12, 2026

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You know what you want to say. 

The hard part is figuring out how to make the slide look good.

Microsoft is tackling that familiar problem with a collection of improvements to the PowerPoint creation experience. 

The company's PowerPoint Craft initiative includes new SmartArt layouts, themes and changes intended to make creating and working with presentations easier.

These additions complement PowerPoint Designer, the established feature that can automatically suggest professionally arranged slide layouts. 

Microsoft now refers to Designer as Design Suggestions for Copilot users.

The result is more choice before you start manually dragging text boxes, pictures and shapes around the screen.

Here’s a Cool Tip: Check PowerPoint’s design tools before building that next slide by hand.

Feature Explanation

The latest PowerPoint design work is best understood as a collection of improvements rather than one completely new feature.

SmartArt is one of the stars. 

SmartArt lets you transform information into a visual structure instead of relying solely on text.

Microsoft's existing SmartArt gallery includes layouts for processes, relationships, hierarchies and other information. 

For example, PowerPoint can use SmartArt to build a project timeline.

That's useful when you have information that is technically correct but visually lifeless.

Here are the new SmartArt options:

• Meet the Team layouts: Designed to combine photos with identifying text, making them particularly suited to team-introduction slides.
• Timeline layouts: New choices for presenting milestones, dates, project progress, and other chronological information.
• Numbered layouts: New SmartArt options can turn numbered information into more visual lists.
• Text Card category: This newer category includes visual card-style choices, including numbered designs.
• Icon Circle Label List: A new layout under the List category.
• Additional List and Process layouts: New variations have also appeared in these established SmartArt categories.
• Non-numbered Timeline choices: The expanded Timeline category contains additional designs that don't rely on numbering.

Themes attack the problem from another direction. 

A PowerPoint theme is a predefined collection of colors, fonts and visual effects that gives slides a consistent appearance. 

PowerPoint adds 13 fresh themes covering a range of styles, from minimal and professional designs to more playful and educational looks. 

The expanded collection gives users more starting points for creating presentations without designing an entire visual style themselves.

The update introduces a simpler Design ribbon, putting controls for Colors, Fonts, Effects and Background Styles in a more streamlined location.

Applying a theme can create a unified look while reducing manual formatting.

Then there's Designer, or Design Suggestions for Copilot users. 

It can examine slide content and offer professionally designed layouts. 

It can recognize elements such as pictures, charts and tables and suggest cohesive arrangements.

That distinction is important. 

SmartArt, themes and Designer are established PowerPoint technologies. 

The real Cool Tip is Microsoft's continuing work to expand and modernize PowerPoint's overall creation experience.

What You’ll Gain

• Save time: Start with built-in visual layouts rather than positioning every element yourself.
• Make information clearer: Turn appropriate lists and processes into SmartArt.
• Create consistency: Themes coordinate fonts, colors and effects throughout a presentation.
• Get another design perspective: Design Suggestions can propose alternative arrangements for suitable slide content.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Here's how to do it.

Windows/macOS: Create SmartArt

1. Open your presentation and select the slide where you want the visual.
2. Select Insert > SmartArt.
3. In Choose a SmartArt Graphic, select the type and layout you want.
4. Select [Text] in the Text pane and enter your information.
5. PowerPoint displays the content using the selected SmartArt layout.

fig. 1 - Choose New SmartArt Templates in Microsoft PowerPoint

Cool Tip Example:

• Suppose your slide lists important project dates. 
• Instead of leaving those dates as bullets, try a timeline.
• Do this: Insert > SmartArt > Timeline, then choose a timeline layout and enter your dates or milestones.

Cool Notes:

• For Copilot users, Designer is now called Design Suggestions. 
• The feature may appear on the Home tab for Copilot users.

Windows/macOS: Try Design Suggestions

1. Add appropriate content to a slide.
2. Select Design > Design Suggestions.
3. Review the ideas in the Design Suggestions pane.
4. Select the design you prefer.
5. PowerPoint changes the slide to use that design.

Web

PowerPoint for the web supports themes and Designer. 

1. Select Design, choose a theme or variant, or add suitable content and use Designer to select a suggested design.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

1. Faster starting point: SmartArt can convert ordinary information into a structured visual.
2. Consistent presentations: Themes coordinate colors, fonts and visual effects.
3. Good for business: Timelines can make project dates and milestones easier to communicate.
4. Helpful for school: Processes and hierarchies can be presented visually instead of as walls of text.
5. More design assistance: Designer can recommend arrangements for supported slide content.

Cons:

1. Not every suggestion will fit: A machine-suggested layout still needs human judgment.
2. Designer has restrictions: Microsoft documents circumstances where no design ideas are returned.
3. Connectivity matters: Microsoft says Designer goes online to obtain its design ideas.
4. Availability can differ: Do not assume every newly announced PowerPoint design improvement will appear simultaneously across every account and platform.

Who Should Skip This

PowerPoint veterans who already build every presentation from custom templates and slide masters may get less value from automated design suggestions.

Likewise, people working under strict organizational templates may prefer, or be required, to stick to layouts approved by their organization.

And if you enjoy designing every object yourself, SmartArt and Designer are optional helpers, not requirements.

Feature Access

• These new PowerPoint design improvements are rolling out through Microsoft 365. Availability may vary, and Microsoft has not confirmed the new additions for perpetual-license versions such as PowerPoint 2024 or PowerPoint 2021.
• Designer is available with a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Score

Criterion  |  Score (0–10)  |  Justification

Value  |  8

Better visual starting points can reduce the time ordinary users spend manually formatting presentations.

Usability  |  8

SmartArt, themes and Design Suggestions fit into familiar PowerPoint workflows and require little training.

Wow Factor  |  6

The changes are useful improvements, but they refine PowerPoint presentation creation rather than reinventing it.

Total: 22/30  |  👍 Good

These improvements address a genuine PowerPoint pain point: making slides look polished without turning presentation creation into a graphic-design project.

Compared with drawing structures or arranging every object manually, SmartArt and Design Suggestions can provide a faster starting point while still leaving you in charge of the final slide.

Key Takeaways

PowerPoint's refreshed design experience gives everyday users more ways to turn raw ideas into attractive slides. 

The real benefit is not simply prettier presentations. 

It is spending less time formatting and more time deciding what your audience actually needs to see.

Cool Tip Snapshot

• Feature Name: New PowerPoint Design Tools
• Platform(s): PowerPoint for Windows, macOS and Web, with individual feature support varying
• Quick Benefit: Create polished, visual slides with less manual formatting
• Best For: Business users, students, educators and presentation creators
• Access Type: Subscription / Rolling Out, depending on feature and account
• Difficulty: Easy

Try It Yourself

Before manually rebuilding your next PowerPoint slide, check SmartArt, themes and Design Suggestions and see whether PowerPoint can give you a better starting point. 

Tell us which tool saves you the most time in the comments, subscribe to the One Cool Tip newsletter for FREE, and share this Cool Tip with family, friends and coworkers.

READ MORE

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Ever publish a LinkedIn post about a customer success story, business partnership, conference presentation, or team achievement and wish everyone involved could share the spotlight?

LinkedIn's new Collaborative Posts feature tackles exactly that problem. 

Instead of relying on tags, mentions, or reposts, multiple people and company pages can co-author a single post and share visibility across their respective audiences. 

For professionals trying to grow their network and organizations seeking broader reach, it offers a more effective way to showcase teamwork and shared accomplishments.

Here's a Cool Tip: Team up on LinkedIn posts to expand your audience without creating duplicate content.

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You open an important spreadsheet on Monday morning and immediately notice that several numbers, formulas, or worksheets look different. 

The workbook was updated while you were away, but figuring out exactly what changed can take time.

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Excel has long offered tools for reviewing changes, but those logs can become difficult to navigate in busy shared workbooks. 

Microsoft has added a Copilot capability that lets you ask questions about workbook changes in plain language and receive summaries of recent activity.

Instead of searching through long lists of edits, you can ask Copilot to explain what happened and highlight the most important updates.

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Large spreadsheets often hide valuable insights in plain sight. 

You may have months of sales figures, budgets, grades, or project metrics sitting in rows and columns, but spotting patterns can still take time.

Here's a Cool Tip: Add mini charts that make trends jump off the page.

Excel Sparklines turn data into tiny charts that fit inside individual cells. 

Instead of scanning dozens of numbers, you can quickly see whether values are rising, falling, or staying consistent.

Microsoft describes Sparklines as small charts that visually represent data trends within worksheet cells, making it easier to identify changes, seasonal patterns, and high or low values.

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Formatting citations by hand can turn a straightforward writing project into a tedious hunt for punctuation, italics, dates, and author names.

Whether you are writing a school paper, preparing a business report, documenting research, or creating source-based content, consistency matters. 

A missing field or incorrectly formatted reference can make an otherwise polished document look unfinished.

Here’s a Cool Tip: Let Word handle the bibliography while you focus on writing.

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Word supports several citation formats, including APA, Chicago, GOST, IEEE, ISO 690, and MLA. 

The styles shown can vary depending on your version of Word. 

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If you've ever reviewed a long Word document with coworkers, clients, or classmates, you've probably heard some version of this request:

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"No, keep going."

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Here's a Cool Tip: Share the exact paragraph, not the page number.

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Instead of telling someone where to look, you can create a direct link to a specific section of a Word document. 

When an authorized recipient opens the link, Word takes them straight to the content you selected. 

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For anyone who spends their day reviewing reports, policies, proposals, contracts, or research papers, this is one of those small improvements that can remove a recurring annoyance.

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Writing a comprehensive document often hits a wall when it comes to visual presentation. 

You finish drafting a project proposal or research report, only to realize that readers need charts, process diagrams, or engaging infographics to digest the information quickly. 

Up until now, that meant opening graphic design software, building a graphic from scratch, exporting it as an image file, and pasting it into your document.

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The experience becomes less efficient when an assignment involves several files, multiple research steps, a required template, outside services, revisions, and a finished document that must be ready to share.

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Instead of treating every request as another conversational response, Work can research a topic, analyze information, create editable files, follow reference material, and move through a multi-step workflow while you review its progress.

Users can answer questions, redirect the assignment, and approve important actions while Work proceeds. 

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If you've ever worked in a spreadsheet with hundreds or thousands of rows, you've probably lost track of where you are. 

One misplaced click can leave you reading the wrong row, updating the wrong record, or comparing the wrong numbers.

Here's a Cool Tip: Turn on Focus Cell Before Working with Large Spreadsheets.

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You begin typing a familiar phrase like “Please let me know if you have any…” and pause. 

Word quietly suggests “questions” before you finish the sentence.

That small assist adds up. 

Over the course of a long document or a day full of emails, predictive text reduces friction and keeps you moving. 

Here’s a Cool Tip: Let Word suggest the rest of your sentence.

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If you use Copilot in Excel often, you have likely run into this. 

You ask for a report, then spend time correcting formatting, adjusting formulas, or rewriting outputs to match your usual style. 

The work still gets done, but it rarely looks the same twice.

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By Rodger Mansfield, Technology Editor

June 8, 2026

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A blank PowerPoint deck can still stop a smart person cold.

You know the topic. 

You know the audience. 

You may even have the data. 

But turning that into a clean, well-structured presentation takes time, judgment, and more slide cleanup than anyone wants to admit.

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The feature has appeared in Microsoft documentation under names such as **Agent Mode** and **Edit with Copilot**, but the direction is clear. 

Copilot is becoming more than a chat helper. It can help create, revise, reorganize, summarize, and improve presentations inside PowerPoint.

That does not mean you should let AI deliver your final deck. 

It means you can use Copilot to get past the blank page, build a stronger first draft, and spend your time improving the message instead of wrestling with slide structure.

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By Rodger Mansfield, Technology Editor

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A good presentation can stumble over one bad visual. 

Maybe the product photo has a messy background. 

Maybe a screenshot includes private information. 

Maybe an image pulled from an older report looks blurry when stretched across a slide.

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By Rodger Mansfield, Technology Editor

May 18, 2026

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Few productivity tasks create more quiet frustration than opening a spreadsheet you did not build.

The formulas are buried. The labels are inconsistent. 

Three tabs seem important, two tabs appear abandoned, and one cell is throwing an error that breaks the whole report.

That is exactly where ChatGPT for Excel and Google Sheets becomes useful. 

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