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PowerPoint removed its tool for pixel-level erasing of an image that I've regularly used for years. The recently added AI enabled "Remove Background" and "Erase" tools don't provide the fine pixel-by-pixel control that I need. I'm hoping this tool will be restored. I contacted Microsoft for help and they verified the tool was removed and inaccessible.
I'm using PowerPoint version 16.109.1 that came with my Microsoft 365 Subscription. I'm running PowerPoint on a MacBook Air with Tahoe 26.5.
A family of Microsoft presentation graphics products that offer tools for creating presentations and adding graphic effects like multimedia objects and special effects with text.
This is an issue only in Microsoft 365 subscriptions. In one-time purchases of Office 2024, PowerPoint still has the old Remove Background tool.
To work around this in Microsoft 365, click on the three-dot icon at the right end of the Quick Access Toolbar and choose More Commands. The Ribbon & Toolbar dialog opens.
Change the Choose commands from dropdown to All Commands.
Scroll down the list and select Remove Background.
Click on the Add button, then OK out. The Remove Background tool is added to the right end of the QAT. Click on it when you need to use the old version of this tool.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(92.8, 83%, 18%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3ELC%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Three dots? Please explain further what I should have open and what I’m supposed to be looking at.
It's the icon at the right end of the Quick Access Toolbar that displays 3 dots:
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Based on my research, the pixel-level background removal tool you’re referring to was part of the older manual background editing experience. In recent versions of PowerPoint for Mac (including Microsoft 365 builds like 16.109.1), the image editing experience has been updated, and the newer AI-powered Remove Background and Erase/Mark Areas tools are now used instead. At this time, the previous pixel-by-pixel erasing workflow is no longer available in the current PowerPoint for Mac interface, and there isn’t a setting to restore that exact legacy behavior.
As a workaround, you may consider:
If this functionality is important to your workflow, submitting feedback directly to the product team can help influence future improvements. You can do this in PowerPoint via: Help > Feedback > Send Feedback
(Please understand that we're not Microsoft support, this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators have no backend access and cannot directly intervene in Microsoft products. We provide only technical guidance and best-practice recommendations based on reported issues)
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I just wanted to follow up to see if you need any additional information regarding this matter. Please don’t hesitate to reach out!
AI answer
The legacy pixel-level background removal editor in PowerPoint has been replaced by the newer AI-based Remove Background experience. In current Microsoft 365 builds (including PowerPoint for Mac), that older tool is no longer available and cannot be re-enabled from within the app.
The current workflow on Mac is:
This newer tool supports free-form drawing for keep/remove regions, but it does not provide true pixel-by-pixel erasing like the previous implementation. There is no supported setting or toggle in the documented Mac builds to restore the old pixel-level eraser.
For scenarios that require precise pixel editing, the documented guidance is to use an external image editor (for example, the Microsoft Photos app or another dedicated graphics tool), save the image with transparency (such as PNG), and then insert it back into PowerPoint.
References: