Microsoft PowerPoint has several different slides dials built in but on occasion, you might want to create your own master slide template or several templates that you can use in a presentation. This is especially helpful if you have a very long presentation and want to break it up visually by using a different theme or background for each section.
You can see the built in master slides when you click on the View tab in the top navigation. And then click the button for slide master under presentation views. Here on the left, you can see the different slide masters that are built in to Microsoft PowerPoint.
To create a new slide master, just click the button at the top for Insert New Slide Master. When you create a new slide master, it’s added in the slides pane window below the other master slides. You can add multiple variations of slide masters to the same presentation and specify different design elements for each one. Each slide master comes with a variety of layouts. If you don’t need all of these layouts within your new master, just click to highlight any that you don’t want and hit the Delete key. You can also custom design the master slide and any of the associated slides. Just highlight the thumbnail and the preview and start making changes to the slide in the main window. Any changes you make to the master slide will affect all of the associated layout slides. But changes you make to a layout slide will only affect that particular layout.
So for example, if there are placeholders in a layout slide that you don’t want, just click to highlight the box and hit the Delete key. And of course you can add a placeholder like a space for text or a picture into a slide master as well. Just place your cursor in the slide and then select the button to insert placeholder in the top navigation. And choose the tool you want from the drop down menu then in your main window, draw where you want the placeholder to go.
One way that you can differentiate a new slide master from your original is to apply a theme. Just select the new slide master here on the slides pane on the left. And then up in the top navigation, open the drop down menu for themes and select one of the built in options. When you apply a new theme to a master slide, you’re going to get a new set of thumbnails here on the left because all of the masters within that theme are applied to your new master.
In addition to themes, you can also apply custom background designs to a master slide. You can add a background to one that already has a theme or just add a background to a new blank master which is what I am going to do. Since I already created the master set that I haven’t designed yet, I’m going to highlight the larger master slide for that new set and apply a background. Just right now, I just click on the larger master slide and select Format Background from the drop down menu. You can select a solid fill for the slide background and choose a color from the preset options in the pop up menu or you can choose a grade to enter text or fill which gives you a lot more options to custom design to look.
When you’re through customizing your selection, click Close. If you select Apply To All, it will apply the new background color to all of your master slides. So, once I’ve done everything I want to do with my master slides, I can go back to the normal view. I’m just going to click View and then Normal up here at the top. Now, I can start building my presentation. And after you’ve created new master slides, you’ll see that when you go to Insert a New Slide, all of the custom templates that you created are visible on the menu. And if you select any of them, that style will be inserted into your presentation then you can just go up about adding content as usual.
Finally, if you want to rename your new master slides, do something more descriptive. You can go back to the slide master view and right mouse click on one of the master slides. Then select the option to rename the master from the drop down list. Type in the name you want and click Rename. Now, when you view your templates as you add new pages, the custom name will appear in the Slide menu.
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