The Monkey's Guide to PPT Slides

Wall Street Oasis has been instrumental to helping me find a career in IB out of college. I wanted to write a dedicated guide on how to become an effective slide monkey for the summer. I don’t claim to be some graphics design guru, and I am still learning about the investment banking process and figuring out my career. But if this post helps one student get an FT conversion or an analyst get one less “pls fix thx”, then it is already worth the time for me.

Background: non-target -> local boutique SA (M&A) -> bulge bracket SA (coverage)

Quick Access Toolbar (QAT)

This is the ultimate hotkey setup that allows you to shorten Shape Fill Color (Alt+J+D+S+F+M) to just Alt+4. The Quick Access Toolbar will shave seconds multiplied by thousands of reps from your workload, which means more sleep and more time watching Netflix while you await feedback from your analyst. On your first day, think about which functions you will be using the most and add those to your QAT.

Here’s a great BIWS video tutorial to help you get started with the toolbar:

My personal setup includes 1) insert shape, 2) align object, 3) font color, 4) font size, 5) bring forward, 6) send backward, 7) eye dropper, and 8) merge shapes. I purposefully leave out insert text box function because it’s already built into the insert shape function. Yours is going to look different. Figure out what works best for your productivity.

Slide Master

Slide Master (Alt+W+M) is a great feature that allows you to play around with your slide templates. Add some items into the slide master templates, and you’ll find that you won’t be able to touch them in Normal View (Alt+M+C). This is also an easy way to change the font size of all titles or the line spacing of all body paragraphs.

Ask your analyst if he can send you a PPT of the latest deal they closed. Use the slide master to quickly identify which details are consistent across all the slides (e.g., logo on the bottom left, black line under title section).

Color Palette

Your firm’s color palette probably has several shades of blue and grey. If you’re lucky, they might have a PDF with all the color schemes and respective RGBs. If not, open up the latest deck, make some rectangles to the left or right of the slide (outside the margins). Then change the color of each rectangle to match your firm’s colors and type down their RGBs in those boxes. Then cut all those rectangles and paste them into your Master Slide, so now all of your slides will have the same color palette for future reference.

Side tip: use the eye dropper function (Alt+J+D+S+F+E) to quickly change shape fill color. This saves more time than putting in RGB codes each time. Also works for font color and shape outline color.

Shape Alignment

Remember, IB decks are densely packed with words, numbers, tables, and all sorts of shapes. It’s really hard to align several dozens of logos by hand without straining your eyes and getting carpal tunnel. There are two approaches to ensure that your objects are mathematically aligned perfectly: gridlines and align functions.

Gridlines (Alt+W+S) can help you snap objects to the same vertical/horizontal line. I personally like align functions more because you won’t even have to use your mouse. Be aware that align functions have really long Alt+… codes, so I recommend adding them to your QAT.

Other PPT Tips

Use Ctrl+left click to select only the objects you want to edit. Left click+drag will select everything in between.
Use Ctrl+G / Shift+Ctrl+G to group / ungroup.
Use Ctrl+mouse wheel to zoom in and out.
Use Alt+J+P+I+S and click white background of logos to make them clear.

Conclusion

Anyways, thanks for reading this far. I hope the post helped some of you guys out. If all this stuff is elementary to you, props to you – I hope you kill it in banking. I would just say that practice is key. If you have any other tips, please share in the comments. Good luck, and feel free to pm if you have any questions.