PowerPoint find/replace functionality still absolutely terrible/BROKEN after more than a year

Question

Find/replace in PPT has become borderline unusable! I know there are tons of well-documented complaints about the feature but why has nothing changed?

1. Worst issue: When you add a comment, if you start typing too quickly (assuming that, oh, I don't know, your cursor will jump automatically into the comment, like it used to do and like it makes perfect sense to expect), there's instead a lag of several seconds. This means you constantly type over text or shape that selected for the comment. I cannot stress this enough: THIS IS BROKEN AND CREATES HUGE ISSUES! The delay HAS to go away, or even if it doesn't, I should NOT be able to type over my selected text once I create a new comment. It's utter trash, and the only purpose it serves is to make users accidentally type over content when they have no reason to expect it.
2. Major issue that sucks so, so, so much: Whenever you search for something, it doesn't give you results based on the slide you're on, nor can you easily navigate from a certain point in your deck; instead, it either starts at the very first found instance or a random middle number, and the only way you can try to find something after a certain point is to click through potentially hundreds of results.
   1. For example, I work in decks created by a lot of other people, clients included, and I recently searched for 2 spaces in a huge deck. It came up with nearly 300-some results. I couldn't just replace all with a single space, since it turns out some people used extra spaces to create gaps (yes, I know this is bad practice and always try to fix it when I can, but it wasn't practical in this case thanks to deadlines). There were 2 slides with tables at the start of the deck that had a bunch of spaces in there and I had to leave those tables as they were. This meant that I had to click through nearly 60 found instances of 2 spaces before it got to slides I actually wanted to check. Then when I found one I wanted to fix, if I hit replace, IT STARTED ME BACK AT FIND RESULT 1. I had to click through those 60-some results again and again! PPT used to let you just search forward or back from the slide you were on and that WORKED. This iteration is soooo much less efficient and frustrating, to the extent it's unusable.

PLEASE FIX THIS. It's a major quality issue and creates huge inefficiencies. I have literally given up using replace on many occasions because of this and just have to slog through things manually. The other existing issues ALSO suck (like how if you're running spell check, then come to a slide with comments on it, it'll switch you to the comment sidebar instead of keeping you in spell check), and I've seen dozens of posts with tons of comments complaining about those issues. But these 2 problems should be treated as critical errors/functional problems. Hair should be on fire to fix this. Instead we're more than a year into PPT getting MASSIVELY worse (not just in an aesthetic or picky way), and NOTHING CHANGES.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT FIIIIIIIIIIIXXXXXXXXXXX ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Answer 1

I can't reproduce any delay when inserting a comment in PowerPoint 365 Version 2604 (Build 19929.20172 Click-to-Run). Try running an Office Repair to repair your installation. The Online Repair option is more thorough.

These pages are not being monitored for product suggestions. To make a suggestion that PowerPoint work differently, please choose Help>Feedback>Make a suggestion. Post your idea and others can vote on it. Microsoft uses this feedback to prioritize their programming. Or you can vote for other suggestions that are similar to your concept. There are several, but they only have one or two votes each.

Answer 2

PowerPoint’s current Find/Replace and commenting behavior is not listed in the provided context as a known bug with a documented fix or workaround. The context only covers specific recent issues such as crashes, media problems, add‑in errors, missing features, and some UI glitches, but it does not mention:

• Changes to how Find/Replace iterates through matches or restarts from the first result after a Replace.
• Comment entry lag or focus not moving reliably into the comment box.
• Spell check switching to the Comments pane.

Because there is no official guidance or workaround for these specific behaviors in the available documentation, the only supported action in the context is to submit product feedback so the engineering team can track and prioritize the issues.

To do that, use the Office feedback mechanism described in the documentation: see “How do I give feedback on Microsoft 365” for how to send in‑product feedback directly to the PowerPoint team.

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References:

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