Developers · problem and fix
Why do presentation slides take so many hours to make? Costs, causes and fixes on Mac
Presentation slides take so many hours because most of the time goes to decisions, not clicks. You decide what the talk says, what to cut, and how each slide should look. Each change sends you back to the start. This page covers what it costs, why it happens, and fixes you can use on a Mac without buying anything.
The short answer
- Most slide time goes to deciding the message, not to dragging boxes around.
- Cut extra material and keep the speech off the slides. Multimedia research backs both.
- Write the talk in plain text before you open PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides.
- Set up one master layout and reuse it. Built-in design tools help, but check your plan first.
- No study we found measures slide build time, so measure your own last deck.
What slow presentation slide creation costs you
Hours that do not show on a calendar
Creation takes a large share of working time. Microsoft's 2023 survey put creation at 43% of an average employee's time across documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Slides are one part of that. The real cost is the restarts when the message changes, and a calendar rarely shows those.
Planning time before the first slide
In the 2004 Wilder survey, 58% said they spend more than three hours deciding what to include in a 30-minute talk. That number is self-reported and old. It still points at planning, not clicking. If you start with the layout, you pay for the planning twice.
Rehearsal that gets squeezed out
The same survey found only 38% actually practice, though more than three-quarters agreed practice is a good idea. When a deck runs late, rehearsal is what gets cut. The talk then runs over, and the audience pays for the practice you skipped.
What outside design help costs
BLS reports a median of $30.27 an hour, or $62,960 a year, for graphic designers. Those are pay figures, not the price of a deck. They show what skilled design time is worth if you hand it off. Your own hours have a value too, and it is worth knowing what it is.
Clutter that hurts the audience
Extra text and decoration do more than waste your time. Mayer's review of multimedia learning found that removing extraneous material helped learners in 23 of 23 tests, with a median effect size of 0.86. A slow deck can also be a worse deck for the people watching it.
Why it happens
Content decided late
Many decks change shape after the first draft. The message shifts, and slides built for the old message get rebuilt or deleted. The Wilder figures suggest planning takes a large share of the time, and much of that planning happens inside the app. Decide the point and the audience first, even in a plain text file.
Speech pasted onto slides
When a slide repeats what you say, you spend time making the text fit. Mayer's redundancy result says narrated graphics beat graphics with narration and on-screen text, in 16 of 16 tests. Full sentences on a slide also make the layout harder to fix later, because every line needs its own spacing and alignment.
Extra material and decoration
Each chart, icon, or stock photo adds a choice and a fix. Mayer's coherence result says removing extraneous material helped learners in 23 of 23 tests. Decorative choices pile up, and each one needs alignment, a color check, and a second look after every change to the message.
Formatting by hand
Most decks reuse the same few layouts, yet people set fonts, sizes, and spacing on every slide. A master would fix that once. Hand formatting is the easiest hour to lose, because it looks like progress while you do it, even when the message has not improved.
Starting from a blank file
A blank title slide asks for every decision at once, including font, layout, color, and title size. Duplicating a slide that already works answers most of those questions in one step. People often skip this because a blank file feels cleaner, and then they pay for it later.
How to fix it
These work with or without any app.
Write the talk in plain text first
Use Notes, TextEdit, or a draft message. Write the one point, the audience, and three to five ideas. Cut any idea you cannot explain in one sentence. This costs nothing, and it stops most of the restarts that come later in the build.
Keep one idea per slide
Give each slide one claim. Move the supporting detail into speaker notes or an appendix slide. Mayer's coherence result supports removing extra material, so this fix has research behind it, though the studies mostly used students.
Take the speech off the slide
Use a short label, a single number, or one image. The redundancy result in Mayer's chapter supports this approach. The words you say stay with you, and the slide does the job a slide does best.
Build one master and reuse it
Set fonts, colors, and title position once. In PowerPoint for Mac, open View > Slide Master. In Keynote, set your look on the first slide and duplicate it for each new slide. Start new decks from your last good one, not from a blank file.
Try the built-in tools on a copy
Use the table above as a checklist. Run Design Suggestions, Copilot, Clean up a slide, or Gemini on a copy of your file. Keep only what helps the message. Check your plan and your Mac version first, because each feature has its own requirement.
Rehearse once with a timer
Run the talk out loud once, with a timer running. Mark where you run long, then cut those slides before you practice again. The Wilder survey found only 38% practice, so a single timed run already puts you ahead of many presenters.
Dictate the speaker notes
Hold fn and talk through what you would say for each slide. Clean text lands at the cursor, so you do not type the same script twice. Check how fast you talk first with the speaking versus typing test, so you know whether dictation saves time for you.
Start with what the data can and cannot tell you. Nobody has measured how many hours a deck takes, at least not in a study we could find. The per-slide hour figures you see online come from vendor blogs. This page does not use them. What you can measure is your own time, and that is more useful than any average.
43%
of an average employee's time goes to creating documents, spreadsheets, and presentations (Microsoft, 2023)
Microsoft Work Trend Index: Will AI Fix Work? (2023)58%
say they spend over three hours deciding what goes into a 30-minute talk (self-reported, 2004)
Wilder Presentations: Presentation Survey Results0.86
median effect size for removing extra material in multimedia learning studies, with 23 of 23 tests supporting it
Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, Ch. 12: Principles for Reducing Extraneous Processing$30.27
median hourly pay for graphic designers, a rough proxy for what outside design help costs (BLS, 2025)
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Graphic DesignersHow long does it take to make a presentation?
The best large dataset points at a time sink rather than a single number. Microsoft's 2023 Work Trend Index found that the average employee spends 43% of their time creating things. Creation covers documents, spreadsheets, and presentations together. The survey covered 31,000 full-time workers in 31 markets, fielded February 1 to March 14, 2023. Slides are one slice of that 43%.
A 2004 survey gives a sharper picture of the planning side. Of 750 professionals, 58% said they spend more than three hours deciding what to include for each 30-minute talk. Only 38% said they actually practice, though more than three-quarters agreed practice is a good idea. Read this with care. Respondents were self-selected through newsletters and presentation websites, and the survey's designers sell presentation outlines, templates, and training.
What the research does not tell you
- No peer-reviewed study we found measures how long slides take to build.
- The Microsoft figure covers all creation work, not presentations alone.
- The 58% figure is from 2004, self-reported, and run by a company that sells presentation products.
- We did not open the vendor blogs that give per-slide hours, so this page skips them.
Why slides take so long to build
Most of the lost hours come from work that happens before the slide looks right. You settle the message late, so the layout gets redone. You paste your speech onto the slide, so the text gets shrunk and shrunk again. You add a chart because it looked neat, and the chart needs its own labels. None of this is hard. It is just slow when it repeats on every slide in a deck.
A worked example from one talk
Say you have a 30-minute talk on your team's release process. You open PowerPoint and start with a blank title slide. An hour later you have a deck of bullet points, stock photos, and a font you did not choose. Then you realize the talk should cover rollbacks, not deploys. Half the slides go, and the formatting goes with them. This example is made up. It is an illustration, not a measurement.
Each restart costs more than the minutes it seems to take. Once slides exist, a change in message means you move, resize, and recheck every slide. The work repeats. That is why the fix starts before you open the app, not inside it.
Why extra text and clutter slow you down
Multimedia research gives a useful rule. In a chapter of the Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, removing extraneous material helped learners in 23 of 23 experimental tests, with a median effect size of 0.86. The same chapter found that narrated graphics beat graphics with narration and on-screen text in 16 of 16 tests, also at a median of 0.86. Put simply, text that repeats your speech makes the lesson harder to follow.
Presentation design tools on Mac you can try
Microsoft, Apple, and Google all ship features that cut layout time. Each one has a catch. Check the requirement before you plan a deck around it, and try the feature on a copy of your file first.
| Tool | What it does | Requirement to check |
|---|---|---|
| PowerPoint Design Suggestions (formerly Designer) | Suggests layouts for the content on your slide. | Microsoft 365 subscribers only. Not included in Office 365 Germany. |
| Copilot in PowerPoint | Select Copilot on the ribbon, enter Create presentation from file, and choose a Word file. You get a draft deck with images and speaker notes to review. | Microsoft's page does not state a Mac requirement or license tier. |
| Keynote Clean up a slide | Tidies layout, spacing, alignment, and typography. | Keynote 15.4 and macOS 26. Apple labels it beta. |
| Gemini in Google Slides | Generates an editable deck from a topic and goals. You review and approve an outline first. | Eligible Google Workspace or Google AI plan. Desktop only and English only. |
Apple's page lists Keynote 15.4 as the latest version but gives no release date. Open Keynote > About Keynote to see your version before you count on the feature. The Apple page also says creating and editing presentations does not need a subscription.
Two cautions apply. Design Suggestions arranges a layout you already have. Copilot and Gemini draft a whole deck from a document or topic. A drafted deck still needs your review, especially for numbers, names, and quotes.
How to make slides faster on Mac, step by step
- Write the talk in plain text. Use Notes, TextEdit, or a draft message to list one main point, the audience, and three to five supporting ideas.
- Cut to one idea per slide. Move the rest into speaker notes or an appendix slide.
- Keep the speech off the slide. Use a short label, a number, or one image instead of full sentences.
- Set up one master once. In PowerPoint for Mac, open View > Slide Master and set fonts, colors, and the title position.
- Duplicate instead of starting blank. Right-click a slide in the thumbnail pane and choose Duplicate Slide.
- Try one built-in tool on a copy of the deck. Keep only the changes that help the message.
- Rehearse once out loud with a timer. Note where you run long, then cut those slides.
Set a time limit before you open the app. Decide how long the deck may take, and stop when you hit it. A timer on your Mac is enough. Ask Lazur to start a timer by voice, or to add a rehearsal reminder in Apple Reminders.
Where Lazur helps, and where it does not
Lazur is a voice assistant for the Mac. Hold ⌥ ⌘ to ask about anything on your screen, and it answers out loud. It draws a circle and a label around the thing you ask about. It guides you one click at a time, waiting for each click. It does not click buttons, edit your files, or build your slides.
Lazur is not a plugin or add-in for PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides, and it has no partnership with any of those companies. For a deck, the useful parts save thinking time. Holding fn dictates clean text at the cursor, so you can talk through speaker notes. Lazur can draft a first-pass outline from your bullets, and you check it. For sources, research runs in Lazur's own Chrome tabs with the Lazur for Chrome extension and comes back with a summary and a report.
A routine for your next deck
Use this routine when the deck is due in about a week. If you have one day, spend the first hour on the outline and the rest on the build. The order matters more than how long each step takes. Skip the step that adds nothing to the message.
Mistakes that add hours
- Designing before you know the three points.
- Using a stock photo as a background behind dense text.
- Pasting a Word document into five text boxes, then resizing each one.
- Trusting a generated deck without checking its numbers and names.
- Skipping the rehearsal, then rebuilding slides the night before.
Some decks need a different approach. A talk with a live demo needs fewer slides and more time in the tool. A pitch that will be read later may need a denser leave-behind file. If the two jobs differ, build two files. Do not force one deck to do both jobs, because the extra text slows the talk and the missing detail hurts the reader.
What to do next
Pick the one sentence your audience should remember, then build only the slides that support it. If you plan to dictate speaker notes, check how fast you talk compared with how fast you type using the speaking versus typing test. Lazur has a three-day Pro trial with no credit card, and current plans are on the pricing page.
Ready to try it on your next deck? Get Lazur for macOS, then hold ⌥ ⌘ over your slide app and ask where the control you need is.
Faster with Lazur
Where Lazur helps with slow presentation slide creation
Hold ⌥ ⌘ and say what you want. Lazur sees your Chrome window. Lazur draws a circle and a label around the button or menu you need.
- 1
Hold ⌥⌘ and talk
- 2
Lazur draws a circle and a label around the button or menu you need.
- 3
You stay in Chrome. Nothing to copy into a chat window.
More things to say in Chrome
- “Where is the Slide Master button?”
- “Walk me through Clean up a slide in Keynote.”
- “What does this layout option change?”
- “Hold fn and talk through each slide.”
- “Draft a first outline from these bullets.”
- “Find three recent sources on remote onboarding.”
Free for 3 days, then $18/month. Download for Mac
You say“Where is Design Suggestions in PowerPoint?”
Lazur · points at itLazur circles the Design Suggestions button and labels it. It does not click the button for you.
What developers say to Lazur for this
Each one is a single hold of ⌥ ⌘.
“Where is the Slide Master button?”
Lazur draws a circle and a label around the control on your screen. You click it yourself.
Points at it
“Walk me through Clean up a slide in Keynote.”
Lazur guides you one click at a time and waits for each click. It does not click for you.
Walks you through it
“What does this layout option change?”
Lazur answers out loud about what is on your screen, so you can decide without leaving the slide.
Explains what's on screen
“Hold fn and talk through each slide.”
Hold fn to dictate clean, formatted text at the cursor in any app, including your speaker notes.
Types what you say
“Draft a first outline from these bullets.”
Lazur drafts and types text for you. Check every claim and number before you present.
Drafts it
“Find three recent sources on remote onboarding.”
Research runs in Lazur's own Chrome tabs with the Lazur for Chrome extension and returns a summary and a report.
Researches in the background
A plan you can start this week
- Day 1
Outline
Write the one-sentence point, the audience, and three to five ideas in plain text. Do not open the slide app yet. Cut any idea you cannot explain in one sentence.
- Day 2
Master
Open a new file and set fonts, colors, and title position once. Duplicate your last good deck for the layouts you need. Check which built-in tools your plan includes.
- Day 3
Build
Make one slide per idea, with a short label or one image each. Dictate speaker notes by holding fn. Ask Lazur to explain any control you cannot find.
- Day 4
Rehearse
Run the talk out loud with a timer. Note the slides where you run long, then cut them. Ask Lazur to start the timer by voice so you can keep both hands free.
Questions people ask
How long does it take to make a presentation?
No reliable average exists in the research we found. A 2004 survey of 750 professionals found 58% spend over three hours deciding content for a 30-minute talk, but that number is self-reported. Track your next deck instead. Note the hours spent on thinking, drafting, and formatting separately.
Why does formatting take so long in PowerPoint or Keynote?
Most formatting time goes to setting fonts, sizes, and spacing by hand on each slide. Set those once on a master, then build from layouts. A change on the master carries through every slide that uses it.
Does Lazur build my slides?
No. Lazur does not build decks or click buttons for you. It answers out loud about what is on screen, points at controls, and guides you one click at a time. It can dictate speaker notes and draft a first-pass outline that you check.
Is PowerPoint Design Suggestions free?
Microsoft says Design Suggestions is for Microsoft 365 subscribers only, and it is not included in Office 365 Germany. Check Microsoft's support page for current terms before you plan a deck around it.
Can an AI tool write my slides from my notes?
Yes, with limits. Copilot can build a draft deck from a Word file, and Gemini in Google Slides can generate one from a topic on an eligible plan. Both need your review. Follow your employer's rules before you paste client or patient data.
Does less text on slides really help people learn?
The multimedia research says removing extra material and avoiding repeated text helped learners in most tests. Most studies used students, and the effect sizes may be overstated. Use it as a guide for your own slides, not a guarantee.
Do I need to pay to make slides faster?
No. Writing the outline in plain text, cutting extra material, and building one master cost nothing. Some built-in tools need a paid plan. Lazur has a three-day Pro trial with no credit card.
Sources
- Microsoft Work Trend Index: Will AI Fix Work? (2023) · Microsoft WorkLab · checked 2026-11-07
- Presentation Survey Results · Wilder Presentations · checked 2026-11-07
- Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, Ch. 12: Principles for Reducing Extraneous Processing in Multimedia Learning · Cambridge University Press · checked 2026-11-07
- Graphic Designers - Occupational Outlook Handbook · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · checked 2026-11-07
- Create professional slide layouts with Designer in PowerPoint · Microsoft Support · checked 2026-11-07
- Prepare your presentation with Microsoft 365 Copilot · Microsoft Support · checked 2026-11-07
- What's new in Keynote on Mac - Apple Support · Apple Support · checked 2026-11-07
- Generate presentations with Gemini in Google Slides · Google Docs Editors Help · checked 2026-11-07
Fix slow presentation slide creation with Lazur, free for 3 days
Hold a key and ask. Lazur sees your screen, points at the button and talks you through it, in any Mac app. No credit card.