How to Remove a Background in PowerPoint

How to remove background in PowerPoint with Remove Background

This is the tool Microsoft's help pages describe for PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, 2021 and 2024 on Windows and Mac. It has been part of Office since the 2010 release.

1. Select the picture

Click the picture on your slide. If the Picture Format tab does not appear, double-click the picture to open it.

2. Choose Picture Format, then Remove Background

PowerPoint makes a first guess and colors the part it plans to delete magenta. Everything that keeps its natural color stays.

3. Mark what to keep or remove, then keep the changes

On the Background Removal tab, use Mark Areas to Keep to draw over parts that turned magenta by mistake, and Mark Areas to Remove for background that survived. Select Keep Changes when it looks right, or Discard All Changes to start again.

In PowerPoint 2016 and 2019 the same tool sits under Picture Tools, Format, in the Adjust group, and it starts with a marquee you drag around the part you want to keep.

The one-click Remove background in Edit Picture

Newer versions of PowerPoint add an image editor with its own Remove background button. Right-click the picture and choose Edit Picture, or select Edit Picture at the left end of the Picture Format tab. Choose Remove background, check the preview, and select Update to put the edited image back on the slide. Microsoft's announcement calls the button Edit Image; the help page calls it Edit Picture.

According to Microsoft's roadmap, the editor started rolling out on the desktop in December 2025 and in PowerPoint for the web in February 2026. The minimum versions Microsoft lists are 2510 on Windows and 16.104 on Mac, and rollouts can reach accounts at different times. After you update the image, you can only undo all of the edits together.

Removing a white background from a logo in PowerPoint

For a logo or a piece of clip art on plain white, there is an older, simpler control. Select the picture, go to Picture Format, then Color, choose Set Transparent Color and click the white area. That single color becomes see-through.

It has firm limits. Only one color can be transparent at a time, it works best on simple, solid-color pictures, and it applies to inserted pictures rather than pictures placed inside a shape. On photos, areas that look like one color are usually many slightly different shades, so the result tends to be patchy.

Making a whole image transparent in PowerPoint

The PowerPoint make image transparent setting is different from background removal: it fades the entire picture, subject included. Select the picture, open Picture Format and choose Transparency for presets from 0% to 95%, or Picture Transparency Options for a slider in the Format Picture pane.

Microsoft documents this for PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, 2021 and 2024 on Windows and Mac. It is not available in PowerPoint for the web. In older versions, the workaround is to draw a shape, fill it with the picture, and set the transparency of the shape. Slide background pictures have a transparency slider of their own in the Format Background pane.

Background graphics are not part of your picture

"Background graphics" in PowerPoint are the logos, lines and pictures placed on the slide master, which then show up on every slide that uses that layout. Remove Background cannot touch them, because they are not in your picture at all.

To hide them on a single slide, PowerPoint has a Hide Background Graphics setting; older versions showed it as a checkbox on the Design tab. To delete them everywhere, edit the master itself. On a Mac, Microsoft's steps are View, then Master, then Slide Master; select the affected layouts, choose Background Styles, then Format Background, set the fill to Solid Fill and click Apply to All.

Limits, and a faster route for photos

• Vector files are excluded. Remove Background is greyed out for SVG, AI, WMF and DRW files, and the icons in Microsoft 365's icon library are SVG images.
• The canvas does not shrink. The removed area becomes transparent but the picture keeps its original size, so use Crop to trim the empty space.
• Edges are basic. Microsoft's own notes on the tool describe only modest edge smoothing, and the limits show most on hair and fur.

For photos with hair or complicated edges, or when you want the same cutout in several apps, it can be quicker to remove the background before the picture reaches PowerPoint. CutoutBG AI does it in the browser, keeps the file at its original dimensions and adds no watermark. Guests can do three a day; a free account can do ten. Insert the PNG with Insert, then Pictures, and it sits on the slide with no box around it.

make a transparent PNG for your slides→

If your deck lives in Google Slides instead, the options there are different.

remove an image background in Google Slides→