Fix Slow PowerPoint and Speedup Your Presentations

Often, Microsoft PowerPoint performs poorly and getting rid of those animations have little effect. If you do presentations often, speeding up PowerPoint may send your overall productivity through the roof. It may take a lot of effects for PowerPoint presentation to pleasingly transition between slides.

Related: Fix Slow Word and speedup document processing.

Speedup Slow PowerPoint Presentations

Try the below fixes to speedup your presentations:

1. Cleanup and simplify presentations
2. Remove unnecessary add-ins
3. Stop AutoRecover
4. Disable auto spelling check
5. Remove startup programs
6. Change screen resolution
7. Check hardware graphics acceleration
8. Clear temporary files
9. Check compatibility

Method #1: Simplify Presentations

Some people get too ambitious with the design of the presentation. Complex presentation can be very slow to load, even if you have a good hardware. Follow these steps:

• Reduce the size of the images. Just dragging to resize the image isn’t enough, because the original image still has high resolution and large image size. It is better to remove images in the presentation and optimize them. After these images have optimum resolution and file size, you can re-upload them in the presentation slides. Also you can compress pictures, remove the cropped part of images and choose the optimized size when saving your presentations.

• Remove built-in PowerPoint animation, such as scaling, rotating and fading, because they can slow down the overall performance.
• Remove transparent objects and replace them with objects that have solid color fills.

Method #2: Remove Unnecessary Add-ins

If lot of add-ins are loaded, it is possible that PowerPoint will perform poorly. Each add-in will contribute in slowing down PowerPoint start-ups. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft PowerPoint. Go to ‘Files > Options’ and then to ‘Add-Ins’ section.
• Select ‘COM Add-ins’ option from the ‘Manage’ dropdown and click on ‘Go’ button.

• Look for the available Add-ins list and click the add-in.
• Click the Remove button.

Similar to COM Add-ins, check for other add-in types and remove all. Now check the PowerPoint presentation is opening faster. If yes, then the add-ins are slowing down your PowerPoint. You can enable the add-ins one by one and check the performance.

Related: Fix Slow Excel and speedup spreadsheets.

Method #3: Stop AutoRecover

AutoRecover helps to save your presentations automatically and help to retrieve it when the application is terminated unexpectedly. This is a very useful function to save your content periodically. But setting low AutoRecover time will lead multiple times savings and slow down your activities. So to have good performance and also with AutoRecover function, you can set the recovery time to more than 15 minutes.

• Open Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Go to ‘Files > Options’.
• Under the ‘Save’ tab, find and uncheck “Save AutoRecover info every xx minutes”

Method #4: Disable Spellchecking

Spell checking helps to automatically check the text entries for the correct spelling. If text entry is slow or delayed when typing, it could be necessary to disable the spell checking feature. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft Outlook and go to ‘File > Options’.
• Go to ‘Proofing’ section and scroll down to the section ‘When correcting spelling in PowerPoint’.
• Disable ‘Check spelling as you type’ option. Click OK.

• Restart PowerPoint and verify that the problem has been resolved.

Method #5: Stop Loading Startup Programs

If you have the habit of opening PowerPoint immediately after starting Windows then the startup apps could affect the opening of PowerPoint. If your computer has plenty of startup items, it is possible that one of them causes problems. Follow these steps:

• Close all programs. Press ‘Win + R’ keys to open Run window. Type in ‘msconfig’ and open Windows Configuration Utility.
• Find and click “Selective Startup”, under the General tab. Uncheck “Load Startup items” and click OK
• Restart the computer and re-open Microsoft PowerPoint. Check whether the problem has been resolved.
• If PowerPoint performs much better, then the problem is verified. The next step is to identify the program that causes the problem.
• Close all programs. Go to Start and type in ‘msconfig’ in the search/run field. Click OK.
• Find and click “Selective Startup”, under the General tab.
• Check “Load Startup items” and click OK. Select the Startup tab.
• Disable a startup item that may cause the issue. If problem still persists, re-enable the item and disable another.

Related: Fix Slow Outlook and speedup emails.

Method #6: Check Screen Resolution

On computers with weaker hardware configurations, high screen resolutions may cause slowdowns in performance. Especially when you have dual monitor then the screen resolution will affect the display as well the speed of your presentation. So it is necessary to have the recommended resolution for your computer. Follow these steps:

• Go to desktop and right click on the empty space.
• Choose ‘Display setting’. Under ‘Display’ section check the available resolutions.

• Choose the recommended resolution for your computer.
• Confirm the selection and check whether the performance level improves.

Some resolutions may cause distortions in the layout of the presentation, so you may need to choose the most appropriate screen resolution.

Method #7: Enable / Disable Hardware Graphics Acceleration

If you have a moderately powerful computer and PowerPoint still performs poorly, then it is possible that you are not using the full capacity of the hardware. Graphics accelerator is a dedicated hardware that boosts performance when rendering 3D objects and images. The processor can do other tasks, which improves the overall computing process as well. Follow these steps:

• Open Microsoft PowerPoint.
• Go to ‘File > Options’ and click on ‘Advanced’.
• Under ‘Display’ section, look for ‘Disable hardware graphics acceleration’ and make sure it’s not checked.

• Also disable ‘Disable Slide Show hardware graphics acceleration’ option.

If you have latest computer with powerful processor, you should enable these options to get good performance.

Method #8: Clear Temporary Files

Deleting files associated with PowerPoint presentations in temporary directory could help to speed up the start-up process significantly. Follow these steps

• Type in ‘Disk Cleanup’ in the Windows search box.
• Choose Disk C: and click OK.

• Check the Temporary files option and click OK. Click OK again to confirm the deletion of temporary files.
• Open PowerPoint and check whether the problem has been resolved.

Method #9: Do Compatibility Check

In PowerPoint 2016, go to ‘File > Info’ menu. Click on ‘Check for Issues’ button and then choose ‘Check Compatibility”.

This will help especially when you are dealing with presentations made in earlier versions.

Conclusion

Most of the Microsoft applications works integrated with Windows operating system. This makes the troubleshooting process more complex as many components of your operating system can also affect the speed of PowerPoint presentations. We hope one of the above mentioned solutions help you to speedup the presentations.