Does PowerPoint allow images to be displayed by reference, rather than placing the entire image in the slide?

Question

I want certain images in my Powerpoint presentations to be displayed, but not paste in the slide show. In other words, the same image may appear on multiple slides in the Show; some images appear in multiple Shows.

Instead of multiple copies of the same large image in a show, can I simply specify a pointer to the image, which, when the slide is displayed, the image is also displayed (as if it were pasted in place)?

Two reasons for seeking this functionality:

1. Some of the images in the presentation are very large, and Id rather only deal with one copy of the image, keeping the show size smaller.
2. Some images, get updated regularly, or exist in multiple sub presentations, and I'd rather make one update, without updating all the Shows that image is part of.

Any advice/work-arounds/pointers to info would be greatly appreciated. Im using PPT 2016.

Answer 1

If you insert an image once then copy it to other slides, PPT only stores one copy of the image. But that doesn't really solve your problem because if you change the original image, that won't change the copies of the image, so updating won't work.

HOWEVER:

If you do Insert | Picture, select the picture you want, then click the triangle next to Insert and pick INSERT and LINK, PowerPoint both links and inserts the image.

If the original linked file is unavailable, it uses the inserted copy of the image. If the original file is AVAILABLE and has changed, PPT updates with the new version of the image when you open the PowerPoint file.

And if you insert + link then copy the image to other slides, all of the copies will update when the original changes.