The Master for your presentation is not locked
in stone. You can make changes to it that will automatically be applied to
everything that uses that master. This means masters for slides, handouts, and notes
pages, too. This is very powerful! You can also apply more than one Master
for your slides.
You can edit the Master Slide (the first one in the list) or just an individual layout that goes with that Master Slide. You can create your own layouts, too.
If your presentation uses more than one Master, the additional Master Slides will appear in the order in which they were applied. The layouts for each master will be directly below the master. Sometimes that creates a LOT of scrolling.
The Master Slide shows the default locations for placeholders for a standard slide with title and tex when you choose to display them. You can still move these around or delete them on individual layouts or even on slides themselves.
The Master Layout dialog shows a check mark for the default placeholders that are already included on the current Master Slide. Check the boxes for the ones you want to show all or most of the time. In PowerPoint 2013 and 2016 you can uncheck previously checked boxes but not in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.
The Master Layout button on the Master View ribbon tab opens the dialog. The button is active for the top level
Master Slide, but not for the layouts based on that master.
You can delete any of the default placeholders from individual slides if you wish. That will not affect the Master Slide at all.
Master Slide from Post-Mortem template
Master Slide from Equity theme
Placeholders are in different spots.
For the placeholders for Date/Time, Slide
number, or Footer to actually show on the slides two things must happen:
You must use the Insert Header/Footer dialog from the Insert ribbon tab to select and configure the placeholders on the Slide tab.
Dialog choices not actually used: In the Header and Footer dialog, the placeholder choices appear to be available even when they do not exist on the layout. No warning or explanation will
appear to explain why your choices did not show up!
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Step-by-Step: Modify Masters |
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What you will learn: | to modify a Slide Master: fonts bullets to remove and restore placeholders on Slide Master to format a placeholder with ribbon and with dialog to copy placeholder formatting with Format Painter to format text size for a placeholder |
Start with: AnniversaryTripsOffer2-Lastname-Firstname.pptx from the previous lesson
In the last lesson you applied a pre-designed Fonts theme. This time you will manually change the fonts in the Slide Master. This will automatically change all of the slides that use that master. Very slick feature!
Save
As, with the name AnniversaryTripsOffer3-Lastname-Firstname.pptx as a new file on your Class
disk in the folder powerpoint project2.
Problem:
Broadway BT font is not in list
Solution: Choose a
font with a wide stroke, like Broadway, Britannic Bold, or Cooper Black.
Save.
[AnniversaryTripsOffer3-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]
You are not stuck with the choices of bullets for the different bullet levels in the template. You can change any of them to any symbol or picture that you have access to. So many choices!
Click on
the Customize button at the bottom right
of the dialog.
The Symbol dialog appears. It shows the font for the current bullet symbol is Garamond. That was the original font for body text in the template.
Scroll the Font list and select Wingdings.
This font is installed with Windows.
The
characters in this font appear in the dialog.
Problem:
No fonts are listed
[March 2016] In PowerPoint 2016 the Customize Bullets process currently fails to show any of the installed fonts in the Symbol dialog.
Workaround: Until this issue is fixed... Close the Symbol dialog. On a layout or slide, switch to the Insert ribbon tab. Click on the Symbol button. Change the font to Wingdings. Select the square symbol as in the step below. Click on OK. Delete the symbol from the slide or layout. Repeat the steps above to open the Bullets and Numbering dialog and then Customize. The symbol you want (square with curved sides) shows in the 'Recently used symbols row'. Click on it and then on OK.
Click in the Date/Time placeholder at the bottom left of the Master and press the DELETE key. The placeholder vanishes. So simple!
Let's change our minds and return the Footer, but this time you will put some text into it. Once a placeholder has been deleted, you can get it back from the Master Layout dialog. The question then becomes how to make it show up on the slides. It is not as easy as you might expect.
From the Slide Master ribbon tab, click on Master Layout
.
The Master Layout dialog appears. The gray boxes are already being displayed.
Problem:
The Master Layout button is unavailable.
You do not have the Slide
Master at the top selected.
Solution: Click on the first
thumbnail in the Navigation pane while in Slide Master View.
Scroll the layouts in the right pane for this master.
(Thumbnails do not update until you leave Slide Master view and return to that view!)
None of the layouts are showing your new footer text but the color did change. Unexpected!
You must 'insert' the footer as well as set it up in the Slide Master to have it show up on a slide.
Point of Confusion:
Inheritance from Slide Master
Clearly things are not clear
about these placeholders on the Slide Master!
Placeholders are a special type of text box, so they can be formatted with fill color, lines, and effects like shadow and bevel. Their length and width can be changed, too. You can change characteristics from the ribbon or from the Format Shape dialog or pane.
Right click on the Footer placeholder and choose Format Shape from
the context menu.
The Format Shape dialog or pane appears with a number of pages
and choices. Some of these settings you
could also do from the ribbon or manually.
With the Lock aspect ratio box not checked, change the width
only to 200%.
Live Preview shows the change. (You may need to move the dialog to see.)
The placeholder stretches out to the right, but is no longer centered. There is no automatic way to center a text box on the slide!
Lock
aspect ratio means to change the length and width by the same
percentage so that the proportions of the object do not change.
Drag the placeholder back to the left until it seems centered again.
Is it easy to get the wide placeholder centered this way?
Save.
[AnniversaryTripsOffer3-Lastname-Firstname.pptx]
How to
check centering
of
a placeholder with ruler
When the ruler is showing
at the top [View ribbon tab > check box for Ruler], a dotted line on the ruler shows where the mouse is.
Position your object and then put your mouse pointer over the
top center handle of the selected object. Look at the ruler to see if the dotted
line on the ruler is near the zero. Unfortunately you cannot drag the object while the mouse is over a handle. It resizes the object instead.
PowerPoint 2013, 2016: On the Drawing Tools: Format tab, click the Align button to open the list of choices. Click on Align Center.
The placeholder jumps to center itself on the slide.
How to
check alignment
of
a placeholder with guides
A dashed red alignment guide line appears over the slide when the center of the placeholder that you are dragging is aligned with the center of another object, like the title placeholder or the text placeholder.
Spacing guides show as dashed red lines with arrows on both ends. These appear when three or more objects are equally spaced. In this lesson the space is too small to show more than a red line.
These guides are new and can be quite helpful. But they do NOT tell you if an object is centered on the slide. Use the ruler if the alignment guides are not helpful.
Format Painter can copy formatting from one text box or placeholder to another. A great time-saver when you need to do the same formatting on different slides or masters!
Click on the Footer placeholder.
The placeholder formatting is applied.
But
wait! The colors are different than in the first slide master!
You originally picked colors from the template's theme colors. Format Painter applied the matching colors from the theme colors for the current slide master, Accent 3, Darker 25% and Background 2. It does make sense!
It is still
a bit of a surprise that the shape size did not get copied.
Evaluate: Does this new background color
for the Footer placeholder blend
well with the title slides and the other slides? Do the fonts and font sizes work well? How
does the new bullet shape do? Do you like the footer? Is it in the best position? Is it annoying? What
would you change about this presentation to improve it? You should have several suggestions!
I think we can all agree that this presentation still needs work.
Uncheck the box for the Footer and then click Apply to all.
Now the footer will not show on the slides, but it is still part of the
Master.
To remove a placeholder from the Master Slide in these versions, you must select it on the Master Slide and delete it. The next time you open the Master Layout, the box will be unchecked for the placeholder you deleted.