If you’ve haven’t previously heard of the Slide Master, then you are missing out on a seriously useful feature.
What is a Slide Master?
Of course, this is the first question you’re probably asking yourself.
Here’s the “official” explanation:
A slide master is the top slide in a hierarchy of slides that stores information about the theme and slide layouts of a presentation, including the background, color, fonts, effects, placeholder sizes, and positioning.
Microsoft Support – https://support.microsoft.com/
OK, OK – I’m sure you want the ‘plain English’ version:
When you want all your slides to contain the same fonts, colours and images (such as logos), you can make those changes in one place – the Slide Master, and they’ll be applied to all your slides.
Isn’t that a Template?
While there are a few similarities, and they work together – no, they are two different things.
A template is a file format that allows you to create new files with specific content, it does include a master, but it can also include a range of slides, with or without content on.
With this option, you change the look of just this specific presentation file and all of the slides saved within.
Why use a Slide Master?
Ahh – this is a great question!
OK here’s the scenario:
You have to have your logo on every slide – the same size and in the same position. Not only that but all of the slides need to have the slide number and your business website address displayed.
Now you could create a slide, add all those things and then duplicate it over and over. Yes, that will work, but when you change the slide layout you might find things are not in the best place, or even disappear from the slide all together.
However, if you use the Master Slide instead, you can not only set the standard look for all the slides, but you can customise the look for each of the built-in layout options.
A few minutes spent setting up the look on the master, will save you time in the long run.
Next Steps
Time to put this idea into practice, you can purchase the step-by-step handout Using Slide Masters in PowerPoint, or choose the topic specific mini session (coming in 2022).
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