Using Slide Master View

In PowerPoint, there are numbers of different themes that are ready to be used for your presentations. Each theme has its own unique design that, when you select a theme, it rearranges and changes the contents of your slides. Your text font may change and be rearranged to a different position, and shapes are added to the background. This is because each theme has its own built-in or default slide layouts and background graphics. You can edit these layouts using the feature, Slide Master View. When you have mastered how to use the Slide Master View, you’ll be able to customize your slides to make unique designs.

 

 

Using the Slide Master View

In this article, we will be using PowerPoint 2016 Slide Master View.

 

Whether or not you’re making significant changes to your slides, Slide Master View allows you to create a consistent and professional presentation with less effort. You can use the Slide Master View to change just about anything in your slides, but here are its most common uses:

 

Background Modification – Modifying the background of your slides to suite preference and appropriateness is made easy by Slide Master. It enables you to change the background graphics of the available PowerPoint themes or add a watermark or logo to each slide all at once.

 

Rearrange placeholders – Making adjustments to placeholders of one layout will accordingly adjust all slides with such layout enabling you to save time and effort of doing such task slide by slide.

 

Customizing Text Formats – Slide Master makes your customizations on the text formatting easier. For example, it can help you to change text color on all slides at ones.

 

Customize your own slide layout – Slide Master can let you create your own layouts. This includes your own background graphics and placeholders.

 

 

Making Changes to all slides:

One function of the Slide Master is to let you make changes on all the slides in your presentation simultaneously. In this demonstration, we will be adding a logo to every slide. You can work along by following the steps below.

 

1. Select the View tab from the ribbon, then click the Slide Master command.
2. The presentation will accordingly switch into Slide Master view with the Slide Master tab being selected.
3. Select the first slide on the navigation pane at the left.
4. Now you can make your desired changes to the slide master.
5. You can perform further adjustments like moving, resizing, or deleting slide objects.
6. When you’re done with your modifications, click the Close Master View command of the Slide Master tab.
7. Accordingly, the changes will appear in all the slides of your presentation.

 

Customizing Slide Layouts

Making changes to all the slides all at once may result to some individual adjustments on a certain layout.  We will customize this layout where it should result to an automatic adjustment on all the slides using such layout.

 

1. Go once again to Slide Master view.
2. Navigate the left navigation pane by hovering your mouse over each layout to locate which slide is using the desired layout and see which slides are currently using that layout in the presentation. Select the desired layout, for which in our case is the Picture with Caption Layout
3. Some layouts may have the background graphics hidden. To show such graphics, find the Hide Background Graphics command and uncheck the box next to it.
4. Add, move, delete, or adjust objects as preferred.
5. You can also modify the placeholders accordingly.
6. When you’re done, close the Slide Master view by clicking the Close View command.
7. All slides using the layout will be updated.

 

Customizing text formatting

This feature can also enable you to customize your text formatting including font, size, color, and alignment. Each title place holder is connected to the master title style, thus changing the font in the Master Title Style will result to the same change for every title placeholder in your presentation.

 

Creating New Slide Layouts

One unique and convenient feature of Slide Master is the option to customize your own slide layout to an existing theme. Additionally, you can use this feature to create an entirely new personalized theme for your presentations.

 

To insert a new slide layout:

 

1. Go to Slide Master View. From the Slide Master tab, click Insert Layout command.
2. The new slide layout will be inserted accordingly
3. By default. the new slide layout will include title and footer placeholders. To toggle these placeholders, clock the Title and Footers boxes in the Master Layout group.
4. With the slide being set, you can now proceed in adding background graphics, shapes, and pictures as well as arrange and delete the existing placeholder.
5. You can also add new placeholders but clicking the bottom half of the Insert Placeholder command, then select the desired placeholder type.
6. Draw the placeholder by clicking and dragging on your slide.

 

Renaming a Custom Layout

You can also name your customized layout as you pleased.

1. From Slide Master view, select the desired layout and then click the Rename command.
2. You can then input the desired name when a dialog box will appear. Click Rename.

 

Using a custom layout

1. If you are in Slide Master view, exit by clicking the Close Master View command on the Slide Master tab.
2. Navigating the Home tab, insert a new slide with the custom layout or apply it to an existing slide.
3. The custom slide layout will be added/applied.

 

Creating a New Theme

Modifying the layouts in Slide Master view is basically creating a custom version of the current theme for which you can save as a new theme. To save a theme: Navigating the Slide Master tab, go to the Themes command where a drop-down menu will appear. Click the Save Current theme from the drop-down.

You can also save the theme outside the Slide Master View and from the Design Tab. Click the drop-down arrow in the Themes group and select Save Current Theme.