Tutorials / Pictures, Icons & Videos

How to use PowerPoint icons to improve your PowerPoint presentations

By Taylor Croonquist1 min readSeptember 17, 2017

cons have become an everyday part of our lives. We’re used to seeing icons as placeholders for software, tasks, settings, etc. Icons are even used in every day signs…think of ‘stop’ and ‘exit.’

They are also very useful in presentations.

What is an icon?

An icon is simply a visual symbol that represents an object or a concept. 

A concept or an object can be represented by almost any number of icons. The concept of ‘success,’ for example, could be represented by any of the following icons:

Icons-in-PowerPoint-1

And the concept of ‘objectives’ could be represented by any of the following:

Icons-in-aPowerPoint-2

Adding icons to your slides is a simple and effective way to enhance their design and messaging.

Note: Icons in their simplest form are simply images. However, if you want to customize them to better fit your presentation’s design, you will need to either create icons from scratch, or insert icons as vectors. Alternatively, if you have the Office 365 subscription, you can insert icons as native PowerPoint shapes.

Where to find icons

If you’re going to work with icons in PowerPoint, it’s helpful to understand how to:

How to use icons in PowerPoint

Once you get icons into your presentation, you’ll likely need to know how to:

  • Save icons as images
  • Use icons in creative ways
  • Use shortcuts for inserting icons

About the Author

Taylor Croonquist

Taylor Croonquist

Co-Founder, Nuts & Bolts Speed Training

Taylor Croonquist is a PowerPoint expert and trainer. Over a career spanning the globe, from consulting in New York and investment banking in China, Taylor has truly seen it all in PowerPoint. Through necessity and a natural tech savvy, Taylor honed his PowerPoint skills to the point of even blowing the minds of the Microsoft PowerPoint programming team. When he's not busy crafting PowerPoint training, you can find him reading a sci-fi series or scuba diving.

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