Stop building slides from scratch — this free add-in does it for you

There are plenty of alternatives to PowerPoint today, and many of them promise the same thing: paste in your text, and the tool will generate presentation-ready slides for you. That all sounds great, but the moment you try to move those slides into PowerPoint and make adjustments, the issue becomes apparent.

I, for one, still prefer to design and present my slides in PowerPoint. However, that doesn’t mean I want to spend hours building slides from scratch every time I create a presentation. Because of that, I went looking for a free add-in that could give me access to a wide range of templates and customization options while letting me stay inside PowerPoint. After trying a few options, it’s safe to say that Smarter Slides is the best answer.

A free PowerPoint upgrade with 100+ features

Proof that not all useful software hides behind a paywall

Smarter Slides is a free PowerPoint add-in that installs directly into your ribbon. After installation, you’ll see SMARTER ORGANIZE and SMARTER FORMAT alongside the default PowerPoint tabs on your ribbon. It runs on Windows with PowerPoint 2010 and above, and unlike many productivity tools with feature lists this long, there's no subscription or registration wall. You just download it and start using it.

The developers maintain the add-in through a voluntary donation model, which is impressive considering how much it includes. The tool offers more than 100 time-saving functions and a library of over 1,100 pre-designed templates. They are transparent about the approach, which is why you’ll see a Donate button built right into the ribbon. Whether you choose to contribute is entirely up to you. Either way, the software works fully.

Installation is straightforward in most cases: download the EXE file, run it, and follow the setup wizard. However, if your workplace restricts administrator permissions, which is fairly common in corporate, you can download the PPAM file instead and load it manually through File > Options > Add-ins. It takes a few extra clicks, but it still lets you install the add-in without needing IT.

Two tabs that eliminate the most annoying parts of building slides

Once installed, Smarter Slides adds two dedicated tabs to your PowerPoint ribbon: SMARTER ORGANIZE and SMARTER FORMAT. Each focuses on a different aspect of building slides, but together they address many of the tasks that typically slow the process down.

SMARTER ORGANIZE focuses on the structural side of presentations. It can automatically generate agenda slides and mini-slide summaries, and it lets you add progress bars or title progress trackers, so your audience always knows where they are. It also helps clean up presentations by removing hidden metadata before you share the file. There’s even a built-in spell checker along with quick-access links to Google and Wikipedia, which is helpful when you need to fact-check without leaving PowerPoint. The tab also provides access to a template gallery with more than 1,000 well-designed slides, and all you need to do is to save your presentation once for the gallery to become available.

SMARTER FORMAT focuses on the visual side of slide design. If you’ve ever spent too long trying to make several shapes identical in size or color, this tab solves that problem. The Format, Color, Size, and Distance Pickers allow you to copy attributes from one object and apply them to others. The Fast and Expert Wizards handle more complex formatting tasks, including alignment, color formatting, and sizing adjustments. Meanwhile, the Smarter Toolbox collects smaller utilities for everyday tasks, such as copying an object or layout’s exact size, which might otherwise require many manual steps.

A built-in slide library you’ll actually use

Your future slides are already designed

Smarter Templates is easily the icing on the cake of this add-in. You’ll be able to access more than 1,000 pre-designed templates organized into categories like Infographics, Timelines, Maps, and Icons. You can browse them through a built-in gallery, choose the one that fits your slide, and insert it directly into your presentation. If you come across templates you want to reuse, you can also click the heart icon to add them to your Favorites, so it’s easy to find them later.

Once you select a template, you have two options: you can click INSERT TEMPLATE to add it to your slide exactly as it appears, or you can select CHANGE DESIGN to customize the template before inserting it. The customization window gives you control over several details, including which slide the template should be placed on, the slide layout, color options, size, position, and placeholder text settings. You can adjust the template colors using the available palette or switch to a single-color style if that fits your presentation better. If you need precise branding, you can also enter RGB color profile values to match your exact corporate colors. The best part is that you can make all of these changes before the template even lands on your slide.

After you finish customizing, click INSERT TEMPLATE, and the design will appear in your deck. The customization window remains open afterward, which makes it easy to insert the same template again or choose another one to modify and add. If you prefer, you can simply close the window and continue editing the slide you just inserted.

As you continue refining templates to suit your workflow, you can also save your own versions to the Custom Template Gallery. To do this, select a shape or group of shapes and click Save Template on the SMARTER ORGANIZE tab. Later, you can open Smarter Templates and navigate to Custom Templates to find it ready for insertion. It’s worth noting that the tool saves shapes and their associated text or formatting, but it doesn’t save full slide layouts.

If you regularly rebuild the same slide structures or shape arrangements, Custom Templates alone can save a significant amount of time. Instead of starting from scratch every time, you can store those elements and reuse them whenever you need them.

As long as you have the text ready for your presentation, there’ll be a template that fits. You just select it, customize it to your needs, insert it into the slide, and add your text. At that point, your presentation is already on its way to being ready for delivery.

Build better PowerPoint slides in a fraction of the time

There’s no shortage of tools that promise to save you time but end up introducing a new learning curve instead. Smarter Slides feels different because it works directly inside PowerPoint, which you’re already familiar with, and focuses on solving problems you’ve probably already encountered while building presentations.

No matter how often you build slide decks or what you build them for, this add-in is easily worth the ten minutes it takes to install. Once it’s in place, you can keep using PowerPoint the way you normally would, just with far better templates and a much faster workflow.