How Do I Open A Template In Powerpoint?

In this epic PowerPoint tutorial, y'all'll learn how to create a PowerPoint template from scratch.

What is a PowerPoint template and why do y'all need 1?

In short, a template is a set of pre-built slide layouts and defined formatting to assistance you speedily create brand consistent and professional PowerPoint presentations.

Below is an example of the properly built template you'll larn how to create in this tutorial.

Time Saving Tip:You can save yourself a bunch of fourth dimension by first ownership a professional PowerPoint template and then tweaking it to meet your needs.

To encounter the four best places I recommend finding professional PowerPoint templates online (and why I like them), read my guide here.

If you and your team brand lots of PowerPoint presentations, a properly congenital template tin can save you THOUSANDS of hours building and editing your slides (no joke).

On the flip side, if your template is cleaved (which many are), it tin can make working in PowerPoint a nightmare.

Chances are that if your current PowerPoint template is difficult to work with, you are using a broken template. This tutorial will help you set it (fast).

To learn how to create your own custom PowerPoint theme (that you can utilize with your template), read my guide here.

Part #1. Creating Your PowerPoint Template Slide Backgrounds

In the outset part of this tutorial, you'll observe how to create your own slide backgrounds and how to:

Build the overall frame for your template
Use and navigate the PowerPoint Slide Master (and how the Parent and Child
Slides work together)
Use the different paste special options
Add a pattern background to your slide
Crop images to fit your entire slide groundwork
Add together a radial slope fill up to a shape with transparency
Add new guides and move them around on your Slide Master
And more than!

Additional template resources: If you're not 100% articulate on what exactly a PowerPoint template is, read my guide here.

And for a list of questions I recommend asking yourself before you build your template, read my guide here.

1. Set the colors for your template

The first step is to select a color scheme for your template. Yous tin hands practice that in the Blueprint tab, under Variants.

To choose a color scheme for your PowerPoint template, merely:

Navigate to the Blueprint tab
Open the More variants options
Click on Colors to open the dropdown
Select the colour scheme you desire to apply

If you desire to use a colour scheme that isn't listed hither, you can create your own. To larn how to create your own custom PowerPoint theme, including colors, font combinations, and shape effects, read my guide here.

Selecting a new PowerPoint theme changes all the default colors you take to work with inside your presentation (assuasive yous to maintain consistent formatting throughout).

Your theme colors volition be reflected in all of your color dropdowns as pictured beneath (with pre-populated variants for those colors).

Annotation: Selecting your own custom theme colors does non replace the standard colors at the bottom of your formatting dropdowns. Y'all cannot change these Standard Colors, unfortunately.

2. Set the fonts for your template

To navigate to your PowerPoint Slide Master, simply:

Navigate to the View tab
Select the Slide Chief command

The next stride is to select a font pairing for your template, which y'all tin besides do in the Design tab, under Variants.

Notation: This is one of my top PowerPoint template tips, and is 1 you don't desire to mess up. To come across my nine other elevation tricks for your PowerPoint templates, read my guide hither.

To cull a new font combination for your PowerPoint template, simply:

Navigate to the Pattern tab
Open up the More variants options
Click on Fonts
Select the font combination y'all desire to use

After selecting your new font combination, all the placeholders throughout your presentation will automatically update to your new font styles.

The power to brand this kind of macro level formatting is one of the major benefits of creating a PowerPoint template. You gear up your formatting in 1 place, and it updates throughout your entire presentation (amazing!).

In one case yous have your colors and fonts selected, you are ready to create the framework. This includes your slide backgrounds and other common design elements you volition want in your presentation.

3. Navigate to the Slide Principal View

In society to properly create the slide backgrounds for your template, you'll need to create a presentation framework on the Slide Master.

To choose a new font combination for your PowerPoint template, just:

Navigate to the View tab
Select the Slide Master command

Inside the Slide Main, y'all'll see 2 sets of slides on the left equally pictured below:

#i. The Parent Slide (the bigger slide) is where you want to make the macro-level edits that you want to run into reflected on the majority of your slides. For instance, this is likely where yous will want to see things like your company logo or any corporate branding design element.

#2. The Child Slides (the smaller slides) are where you lot want to customize the individual layouts. For case, your title slides and divider slides may look quite different from the rest of your slides, which is why they'll accept their own Child Slides.

Warning: Although you tin can delete the Kid Slide layouts within a presentation, I don't recommend it.

As Julie Terberg and Echo Swinford betoken out in their book on templates, "Building PowerPoint Templates Stride by Step with the Experts", if you delete these Kid Slide layouts, you are likely to encounter formatting issues and errors when copying and pasting between your templates down the road.

And then unless you are 300% sure you are never going to utilise these layouts (and nobody on the planet is always going to ship you a slide deck with one of these layouts), I don't recommend deleting them.

4. Customize your Parent Slide background

At present that you lot are on your Slide Master, you'll desire to start by formatting your Parent Slide.

That's because the formatting that you assail your Parent Slide will bear upon all of the other slide backgrounds within your template.

A. Choose your PowerPoint template'south background

Adjacent, you are going to format your slide groundwork with the various design elements you want for all your slides.

In the case beneath, I've chosen a pattern for my template that is minimalist and mod. You can download and insert whatever motion picture or design y'all desire to use every bit your slide background epitome.

To aggrandize your cognition and larn how to create PowerPoint backgrounds using the Designer characteristic (and how to troubleshoot it), read our guide here.

B. Crop to Aspect Ratio

If yous are using a picture for your slide groundwork, the fastest way to arrive fit on your slide is to crop it using the Aspect Ratio Crop tool. To do that, simply:

Select the groundwork epitome y'all have pasted on the slide
Navigate to the Format tab
Open the Crop dropdown
Open the Aspect Ratio options
Choose your aspect ratio. In the picture in a higher place I chose sixteen:9 for widescreen to match my slide dimensions (another common aspect ratio is 4:3 for printed slides).
Arrange your photo inside the frame
Hit the Crop control again or hit Esc on your keyboard

This will brand resizing the image to fit your template much easier without having to worry almost any warping.

To learn more nigh the cropping pictures in PowerPoint, read our guide here.

C. Make full out your slide background

To make the image fit your entire slide space, there are 2 options.

Selection #1. You can but drag the handlebars to expand the prototype. Just make sure you lot hold the Shift key while you overstate your image, so you don't accidentally warp it.

Selection #ii. Yous tin resize your image more precisely:

In the Shape Width box, enter 13.33 and hitting Enter on your keyboard
Drag the image in the middle to fit the entire slide

NOTE: In my example in the video higher up, I wanted a smaller pattern. That'southward why I duplicated the background paradigm so that I accept two smaller images next to each other.

And then I made sure to grouping the two images together so that they function as a unit of measurement. To learn all about group in PowerPoint, check out our guide here.

The last case of the groundwork shown below is the event of that. And because the image is attack the Parent Slide similar this, past default information technology will show upwards as all of the slides in my PowerPoint template.

After resizing your groundwork prototype, you will desire to send information technology dorsum backside all other elements.

To ship the image backward, just:

Select your groundwork image
Navigate to the Picture Tools Format tab
Click on the Send Backward dropdown
From the dropdown bill of fare, select Send to Back

This sends the background behind the text as shown in the picture below. This makes all the Parent Slide content placeholders visible again on your slide.

D. Create a semi-transparent gradient layer

With the slide groundwork set for my PowerPoint template, I'grand additionally going to make the slide groundwork less visible by adding a semi-transparent layer.

That'south considering every bit you tin can see in the picture below, the text is non crystal clear confronting the background image I used. This will brand it difficult for people to read my slides during a presentation.

In the steps beneath, I will apply the old method (non-Office 365 subscription) for creating a transparent background in PowerPoint. If you have an Office 365 subscription and desire to see the make-new way to create a transparent image, see our guide here.

Step #ane. Insert and format a rectangle

To insert and format a rectangle in PowerPoint, simply:

From the Insert Tab, click on the Shapes gallery, and select a rectangle (mine is on my QAT).
Draw in the rectangle and so that information technology covers your unabridged background image (for this to piece of work, your rectangle needs to be the same exact size as the image y'all desire to make transparent).
Remove its outline past going to the Shape Outline dropdown and selecting No Outline.

Footstep #2. Add a slope fill

With the rectangle still selected, brand the following adjustments:

Select your rectangle and click Format Shape to open the Format Shape dialog box. This gives you lot a broad diversity of formatting options you can use to format your shape backgrounds for your template.
Select the Gradient fill.
In the Type dropdown, select Radial.
For the Direction, select the "from center" option (in the centre).
In the Gradient stops bar, select the outset slope finish, and from the fill Color dropdown, select white. Nether Transparency, enter 5 %. So that information technology almost looks 100% white in the heart.
Next, select the 2nd gradient bar and drag it to the right. From the make full Colour dropdown, select white. For Transparency, enter 10%.
Then, select the third gradient bar and drag information technology to the right. From the make full Color dropdown, select white. For Transparency, enter 10%.
Finally, select the last gradient bar and drag it to the correct. From the fill up Color dropdown, select white. For Transparency, enter 60%.

Using the gradient fill options described above, your rectangle should look like mine, with some of your text bleeding through it.

Close the Format Shape pane and y'all're all set with your gradient formatting.

Equally a concluding step, right-click your slope rectangle and select Ship to Dorsum and and then Transport Forward and then that it sits backside your placeholders but on top of your blueprint background.

five. Add together a slide background pattern element

As a adjacent pace, I'm going to add a brilliant bar downwardly the correct-side of my slide equally a nice design element. To do that, simply:

Navigate to theInsert tab and select theShapes dropdown.
Select aRectangle and draw it on the right-hand side of your slide. Make sure to identify it on the edge of your slide.
Select No Outline

Note: Make certain y'all are adding this to your Parent Slide and not a Child Slide. This automatically populates the blueprint element on all the Child Slides.

That'south the power of creating a PowerPoint template – you add a design element in i place, and it shows up throughout your presentation.

6. Add and edit your guides

In PowerPoint, guides help with formatting, positioning, and slide-to-slide consistency.

Consider guides equally the anchors on your slide that help you to consistently align your objects. It's an optional pace, simply I recommend adding them to your template.

To add guides to your PowerPoint template, simply:

Click on the View tab
Select Guides. Observe that there are two guides: one vertical and one horizontal.
To move a guide, place your mouse over it, and when your cursor becomes a double-headed arrow, drag the guide to where you want it on your slide.

For now, I will simply place my guides on the edges of the slide, to create a "bleed area" in case office of the presentation gets cut off in impress.

We volition wait at adding more guides in part #2 of this series.To add a new guide, merely kickoff dragging an existing one, so hitting the Ctrl central on your keyboard earlier y'all permit go.

Depending on how you set your guides, they tell users where they should and shouldn't be placing content on your slides.

Part #2. Setting up your template placeholders and footers

With your slide background at present prepare up, let'southward nail downwardly the post-obit three placeholders on theParent Slide:

Title placeholder
Content placeholder
Date and time, Footer, and Slide Number placeholders

And fifty-fifty if you don't desire to employ these placeholders on all of your slides, it'south nonetheless important to fix and format them on your Parent Slide.

Why? Considering if yous don't, y'all run the risk of letting default formatting slip through the cracks and ruin an otherwise perfect template.

After in this tutorial, you'll learn how to tweak your slide layouts away from the Parent Slide if that's what yous desire to do.

1. Format the Title placeholder

There are a number of ways in which you can format your placeholders and there is no right or wrong formatting.

But before nosotros dive into that, let's talk virtually what placeholders are.Placeholders are blank spaces that are designated for certain types of content.

You ready these on your Slide Main then that they are locked when people fill them in when building their PowerPoint slides using your template.

Three keys to remember almost your content placeholders are:

They can only exist set and edited (for existent) on your Slide Primary.
Just text typed into your placeholders will show in the Outline View of your presentation.
Only text that has been typed into your placeholders will change fonts automatically when you change your theme's fonts.

To learn all nigh the Outline View in PowerPoint and how to utilise information technology, read our commodity hither.

Y'all can change the font size, alignment, size, position, etc. of your placeholders to encounter your requirements. Beneath I'll run you through the most common formatting elements.

A. Alter the font size

Before yous showtime formatting your placeholders, make sure y'all are on your Parent Slide. Nosotros will focus on formatting your Child Slide layouts later.

Every bit a first step, permit'south change the font size of the title placeholder:

Select your title placeholder
In the Font Size dialog box, enter 40 (or whatever size you want)

B. Resize and position the placeholder

Side by side, conform the size and position of your title placeholder. To do that, simply select the placeholder and:

Use the four-headed pointer cursor to move the placeholder to where y'all desire it on your slide.
With the placeholder however selected, drag the resizing handles (the eight fiddling white circles) in or out to resize the placeholder.

In that location is no right size and position for your title. You'll simply desire to make sure that it fits your slide.

You lot'll also want to think about how much text yous're expecting people to blazon into the placeholder for their slides. Make sure the placeholder is big plenty to fit the typical scenario.

C. Set your vertical text alignment

Next, set the vertical text alignment for your championship. To exercise that:

Select your title placeholder
From the Home tab, select the Align Text dropdown menu
Choose your desired vertical text alignment (I'll choose Bottom for mine)

Unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise, I recommend that you cull Bottom for your vertical text alignment. That mode your championship text will always stay perfectly aligned at the lesser, from slide to slide.

This helps avoid jumping titles for any slides that take more than than one line of text.
On the flip side, if yous program on having short titles for all your slides (no more than than one line), I recommend using the Centre text alignment instead.

Regardless of what you decide, make sure you examination dissimilar title lengths to run across what will work best for your PowerPoint template.

D. Marshal the guides to the championship

Since nosotros added our guides in the get-go part of this series, now we'll set them to align with our title.

Drag your Horizontal Guides to match the top and the bottom of your title placeholder (add more than guides if necessary)
Drag your Vertical Guidesto friction match the left-mitt and right-mitt sides of the title placeholder (add more guides if necessary)

To add a new guide, only start dragging an existing 1, and then hit the Ctrl key on your keyboard earlier you let go.

Adjusting your guides like this will make aligning objects on your slides much easier as your Smart Guides volition automatically snap them together.

Note: If your Guides are not visible, just right-click on a blank role of your slide and select Grid & Guides, so Guides. That will turn them on. Alternatively, y'all tin go upwardly to the View tab in the Ribbon and select Guides within the Show expanse.

ii. Format the Text placeholder

The Text placeholder on your Parent Slide is special in that it will dictate the default formatting of all the other content placeholders in your presentation (except for the Title placeholder and the Footer placeholders).

Setting the default here on the Parent Slide is important because information technology makes information technology a lot easier to brand fast and consistent changes to swathes of content downwardly the road.

Later in this template series, I will show y'all how to format away from this default beliefs on the Child Slides. But offset you want to set up its default formatting.

A. Resize and position the Text placeholder

The first affair to do with your Text placeholder is change its position and/or size so that information technology's exactly aligned with the Title and Footer placeholders. To exercise that:

Select the Text placeholder and when the cursor becomes a 4-headed arrow, drag the placeholder to the summit and left side so that information technology is aligned with the Title placeholder.
With the placeholder still selected, use its sizing handles to conform its size until it is just correct (factoring the corporeality of text that you lot predict you'll type in, as well as the alignment with the other placeholders).

B. Align the guides

In this stride, you lot demand to marshal the horizontal and the vertical guides to that they align with the Text placeholder. To do that:

Drag the horizontal guides to match the top and the lesser of the Text placeholder.
Similarly, drag the vertical guides to match the left and correct-mitt sides of the Text placeholder.

C. Change the font size

The adjacent pace is to modify the font size of the dissimilar levels of text inside the placeholder. To do that:

Select the first level of text
In the Font Size box, blazon in xx and hitting Enter

Repeat these steps for the second, third, fourth, and fifth levels of bulleted text, changing their font sizes to xviii,16, 14, and xiv respectively.

D. Adjust and align the bullet points

In one case you have gear up the font size, information technology is important to adjust the bullets.

Select all the text styles in the content placeholder
In the Paragraph group, click on the Bullets and Numbering dropdown
Click on the foursquare fashion bullets

Next, you have to adjust the indent of the bulleted lists and so that it appears in all your slide layouts. To do that:

Select the bulleted list you lot want to adjust
Click, hold, and elevate the desired indent mark. In our example, we'll elevate the hanging indent marker.
Echo this for each text level

Yous tin conform the bullets as per your personal preference. Based on your knowledge of how someone is going to be using this template, yous might decide to add more than or less space.

Note: My recommendation as per Julie Terberg and Echo Swinford'southward book, "Edifice PowerPoint Templates Footstep by Step with the Experts," is to always brand sure that you format every unmarried item you have available. That includes formatting each text list level.

You can meet their book on templates hither.

That manner, yous take everything set in case someone decides to suspension the rules or do their own affair. This inevitably happens with templates and you lot want to be prepared for it!

3. Formatting the footers of your template

The footer section of the Slide Master has iii types of placeholders:

Slide number
Footer text
Date and time

A. Set the font size for all your footers

The first step is to modify the font size of the footer placeholders. To do that:

Select all your footer placeholders property theShiftkey.
In theFont Sizedialog box, type 10 (of whatever your desired font size is) and hitting Enter.

B. Resize and position the placeholders

The next affair to do with the footer placeholders is to change their position and/or size so that they're aligned with the rest of the placeholders. To exercise that:

Select each placeholder and when the cursor becomes a four-headed arrow, drag the placeholder to its desired location (employ the guides for assistance).
With the placeholder notwithstanding selected, use its sizing handles to arrange its size until it is just right (factoring the corporeality of text that yous predict yous'll blazon in, too as the alignment with the other placeholders).
Repeat this for each placeholder.

If y'all desire to be 100% certain that all the Footer placeholders are the same, select them i at a time and go to the Shape Format tab in the Ribbon. In the Size section, verify that the height of the placeholders is the aforementioned.

In this example, note that I am swapping the positions of the Appointment & Fourth dimension and Footer placeholders.

Remember to also add new guides effectually these placeholders to help keep them in place. Hither, I'm merely going to add the top and bottom guides, then every bit to avoid confusion and overkill.

C. Format the Slide Number placeholder

Next, we'll need to adjust the formatting of the text inside the slide number placeholder. To practise that:

Right-click the placeholder, click onFormat Shapeand select Text Options
Open the Text box tab
Type 0 for the Left margin and hit Tab or Enter on your keyboard

Note: For the slide number placeholder, you can likewise add together symbols every bit I take here (such equally a bar and 2 spaces), in order to create a visual pause from the other placeholders.

Slide numbers are ofttimes tricky to get right when trying to properly display them on all your slides. To aggrandize your knowledge and learn how to add together slide numbers in PowerPoint (and how to troubleshoot them), read our guide here.

D. Format the Date and Time placholder

The next thing is to format the date and fourth dimension footer placeholder. You can choose any kind of format you similar. Below y'all'll find the steps that I took in the video tutorial at the top of this page.

Showtime, select the placeholder and hitting Ctrl+R on your keyboard to right-align the text to the right (and so that it's flush with the slide number to the right).

Then, yous'll want to choose what kind of date formatting yous desire. To do that, just:

Select the Date and time placeholder and hit Ctrl + R on your keyboard to align the text to the right.
Get up to the Insert tab and in the Text grouping, select Header & Footer.
Click on Date and time so that there is a checkmark side by side to it.
Click on the Date dropdown and select the pick as required. In this example, we are going to select December 30th, 2017.
Click Apply to All to salve the changes. You can see that the date and time text has inverse accordingly.

E. Format the Footer text placeholder

The concluding default placeholder to format on the Parent Slide here is the Footer text placeholder. This placeholder is designed for a tagline, an author's name, or cited sources. For helping citing sources in PowerPoint, read our guide hither.

All you demand to do here is to select the placeholder and hitCtrl+L on your keyboard to left-align the text. This mode, it is side by side to the logo and the text inserted will extend out towards the right.

F. (Optional) Add your logo

While all the default placeholders accept now been ready up and formatted correctly, there is still one chemical element that you tin add on the Parent Slide of your Slide Master; and that is a logo.

This is optional, so don't experience obligated to add ane. In fact, a common practice today is to display the logo more sparingly and merely identify information technology on certain Child Slide Layouts.

To add a logo, simply:

Re-create the logo and hit Ctrl+V to paste it on the slide. Brand certain you paste it as a PNG because it won't lose its quality over time, whereas a JPEG will.
Resize and reposition the logo to make it fit nicely in its desired position. Alternatively, yous tin can click on the Motion picture Format tab in the Ribbon and set the height to 0.35 to get in fifty-fifty with the other placeholders.

You can also utilise this same technique to add together a watermark to your PowerPoint slides. To see how to add a watermark to your slides (like Typhoon or Confidential), read our guide hither.

Part #three. Creating Custom PowerPoint Template Slides

In the final part of this guide, you'll finalize the slide layouts that you want to use in your PowerPoint presentation by formatting the Kid Slides.

TheChild Slides stand for the blueprints for each type of slide included in your template. By default, your Kid Slide layouts will inherit your Parent Slide formatting. Just as y'all will run across, you lot can tweak these layouts to meet your individual needs.

The key to designing good Child Slide layouts is to keep in heed how the end-user is probable going to insert content on each type of slide. Yous want to arrive like shooting fish in a barrel for everyone to speedily fill up them in when using your template.

In this section you'll learn how to:

Remove background graphics so that they're hidden on your Child Slide layouts,
Make the slide background an existing picture,
Rename your custom Child Slide,
Add prompt text to help the template user properly fill up in each layout,
and more!

1. Format the Championship slide layout

The commencement pace is to edit the Championship slide layout. This layout is designed to be filled in with the title and general data about your presentation.

Typically, its looks slightly different than the rest of the layouts. Information technology unremarkably has less text and fewer images/objects, and it stands autonomously.

That being said, it even so needs to lucifer the other layouts overall and wait like it's a part of the same template.

The first thing nosotros need to do when formatting our Title slide layout is to think about the background. Typically, a Title slide volition have a slightly different background from the regular Content slides.

All the same, because the background has been assault the Parent Slide, this means that you will have to deviate from it. There are two ways to approach this – let's go over each one.

A. Hide the groundwork graphics on a Child Slide - Method #i

The showtime method for hiding anything in the groundwork (graphics such as the logo, background patterns, pattern elements, etc.) is to insert a blank rectangle to comprehend it up.

To cover upward your slide background with a white rectangle, simply:

Go to the Insert tab on the Ribbon, click on the Shapes dropdown, select a rectangle.
Draw in the rectangle so that it fills out the entire slide.
Change the rectangle'due south fill color to White.
Remove the rectangle'due south outline.

Next, nosotros'll demand to brand certain the placeholders are visible on the slide, in front of the newly inserted rectangle.

To do that, with the rectangle nevertheless selected, go to the Shape Format tab on the Ribbon, click on the Send Astern dropdown and select Ship to Back.

Notation: Go on in mind that covering upward the background elements like this means that the logo (and whatsoever other epitome you've pasted onto the Parent Slide) volition be hidden. If you desire that element to be visible on this Kid Layout, you lot'll have to copy/paste it in.

B. Hibernate the groundwork graphics on a Child Slide - Method #2

The "technically better" way to do this is to use the default PowerPoint feature set to do this for you lot. Simply:

Go to the Slide Principal tab in the Ribbon
Click on Hide Background Graphics to add a checkmark next to it

This hides annihilation from the Parent Slide that isn't a placeholder. This includes any background images or patterns, logos, and other pattern elements.

You can easily make them visible again by unchecking the Hide Background Graphics checkbox.

C. Add in a new groundwork for this layout

Now that we've removed the groundwork inherited from the Parent Slide layout, we'll demand to add together in background elements we want on this particular Child Slide.

While the background epitome can be different, nosotros want to go along information technology consistent. And so permit'due south go support and take some elements we can reuse.

First, navigate back to the Parent Slide and select the design paradigm (without the slope). Then hit Ctrl + C on your keyboard to copy information technology.

Then, become back to your Championship slide layout and:

Right-click a blank surface area on your slide and select Format Background.
In the Format Background tab, select Picture or texture fill.
Select Clipboard.

This pastes whatever is currently copied on your clipboard into your slide groundwork.

Annotation: Pasting an object direct into your slide background like this means that information technology can no longer be edited in your PowerPoint template.

If instead you paste it directly onto the slide every bit an image, you can always go back in and make adjustments to the epitome, and therefore to the background besides.

It'south up to you whether y'all want your template'south users to exist able to edit the background paradigm or not.

So if you lot're putting the paradigm directly into the slide background, I recommended that you only exercise so when you are sure that this is the final background epitome y'all want to use.

D. Add in an actress design element

The next footstep is to add in a design element that matches the general theme and style of the template. To practise that:

Get to the Insert tab on the Ribbon, click on the Shapes dropdown and select a rectangle.
Draw in the rectangle (it should be filled with the beginning accent colour of your theme) so that it fills about 80% of your slide.
Brand certain the rectangle is centered and in the middle of the slide.

Next, allow's ship the rectangle backside the placeholders.

To do that, right-click the rectangle, open the Send Backward dropdown and select Send to Back.

Eastward. Conform the placeholders

Beginning, adjust your Title and Subtitle placeholders. To do that, only select the two placeholders and:

Alter their Font color to white.
Arrange their position and size on the slide, keeping in mind how much room you need to exit for the text.

Side by side, let's accost the Footer placeholders.

Even if you don't desire footers visible on the Championship slide of your template, I don't recommend deleting them here in the Slide Master View.

Why? Because if someone decides to apply them despite your instructions, you still desire them to appear correctly and match the rest of the template.

To format and hibernate your footer placeholders, simply:

Format the footer placeholders the way you'd similar them to appear if they were used.
Get up to the Slide Principal tab in the Ribbon and deselect the Footerscheckbox.

Note: Even if your footers stay selected on this Championship slide layout in the Slide Primary View, they typically don't appear on that Title slide in the Normal View.

To turn them on, you accept to go to the Insert tab in the Ribbon and select Header & Footer. There, you tin plow them on.

So, unless you truly desire someone to NEVER exist able to add together a folio number, date and time, and footer text to the Title layout, then I recommend leaving them on the Child Slide, to proceed that pick open.

If you deselect the Footers checkbox in the Slide Chief View as we did above, then when someone tries to insert footers in the Normal View, they will not appear.

To learn all about how to add slide numbers in PowerPoint (and troubleshoot ones that won't show up), read our guide here.

One more matter y'all might notice is that the guides are not visible on the Championship slide. Since this is a Child Slide, you can't edit the guides here.

Unfortunately, the guides yous assail the Parent Slide will likely non friction match the content you have on the Title slide (and whatsoever Child Slide whose content deviates from information technology). There is no manner effectually this in PowerPoint at this point in time.

2. Format your Title and Content layout

The adjacent stride is to edit the most unremarkably used PowerPoint slide in any presentation, the Championship and Content layout.

This specific slide layout will look almost identical to to the Parent Slide layout that nosotros've already set up up at this point. This means that there isn't much we have to practice to change it.

However, in this case, nosotros are going to add one more design element to the layout, which is a straight line. To do that simply:

In the Inserttab on the Ribbon, click on theShapes dropdown and select the direct line. To make certain it's 100% straight, hold the Shift central as you draw in the line.
Drag the direct line and place information technology underneath the title. It should perfectly fit in thanks to the Smart Guides. Make sure that it's long enough to go past the text in the Title placeholder.

The reason you don't add this line to the Parent Slide is that the layout has to exist formatted to piece of work for the majority of the layouts in your template.

That ways that the Parent Slide has to exist relatively bare-bones. You can always add together actress elements in the Child Slides.

3. Format the other Child Slides

From here onward, you will need to format each of the Child Slides to match the content that goes in them.

You will want to follow the same procedure every bit in Step #2 above, keeping in mind what each Child Slide is designed for and how the content should be placed.

Some layouts will require more custom formatting and design elements.For example, for the Divider slide (the kickoff slide in the examples beneath,) I have added a rectangle that matches the design elements on the Championship Slide layout.

4. Optional step: Create your own Kid Layouts

In add-on to the default Child Slides that PowerPoint gives you, you lot have the selection to create your ain.

You tin choose to create your own if y'all accept a very specific type of slide that you'll need to create over and over in your presentation.

If yous make the slide under x times, it may not be worth clogging upward your Slide Master surface area. But if you utilise it frequently, creating a layout template for that type of slide volition salve you countless hours.

Here are the kinds of slides yous may want to create a custom layout for:

Table of Contents / Agenda
Quote page
Team bios / Team headshots
Case studies
Thanks / Learn more
About us
Information dashboard
and more

Keep in listen that the blank layout (and other blank variations) can ever be used to create more one-off slides.

Creating a custom calendar slide

In this example, we're going to add a custom Agenda Child Slide. To add together this custom layout:

Go to the Slide Master tab in the Ribbon and click Insert Layout. You'll run into that a new Child Slide gets added in with just a Title placeholder and the Footer placeholders.
Add any additional placeholders you demand (Slide Principal tab > Insert Placeholder) and format them every bit per your requirements. In this example, I've added twenty text placeholders that I've resized and formatted.
Arrange the prompt text in the placeholders to fit the respective content demand. For example, in the image below you tin write "Blazon in item" so that the user knows to type in the right text into each placeholder.

Annotation: You can alter the shape of a placeholder, as well every bit adjust all other properties of a typical shape. That means that y'all tin can as well add together fill, outline, effects, etc.

This is how I was able to create the circular TOC numbers in this layout:

Yous tin too rename the custom Child Layout by:

Right-clicking information technology in the Thumbnail View on the left-mitt side and selecting Rename Layout.
Blazon in a helpful name and click Rename.

Note: You can perform these steps for all custom Child Slides. Y'all tin can likewise create custom layouts for a lot of slides such as for products, case studies, contact united states of america, etc.

However, try not to go overboard considering you don't want to accept a layout surface area packed full of slides, which will confuse the user.

But for very frequently occurring slides, I highly recommend making a custom layout.

At that place are also other slides in the template such equally the content slide with subtitles or a blank slide with a title. You can format them per your requirements.

5. Finalize your PowerPoint template

Now that the template is almost finished, you notwithstanding accept a few critical steps.

A. Fix animations and transitions

The first thing is to prepare the animations and transitions for your slides. For all placeholders that you desire to automatically animate in your template, simply select it and apply your animation.

Note: Keep in mind that animations should be used in your template VERY sparingly. That'south non only because animations tin be overly distracting, just it's also because the user of your template may not want to accept animations set up automatically for them.

In short, make certain you create the template in a way that makes your users' life easier, rather than harder.

Once that's done, permit'southward set up the slide transitions. To practice that, simply:

Select all of the slides in your template (in the Slide Master View).
Click into the Transitions tab in the Ribbon and select your preferred slide transition.

Next, permit's make sure nosotros close the Slide Primary View since we are done with information technology. From the Slide Master tab in the Ribbon, clickShut Main View.

Notation: At that place is also a Notes Master and Handout Principal in PowerPoint that you can fix and format. These masters determine the look and feel of your PowerPoint handouts when you impress them.

To larn how to format these elements in regards to printing multiple slides per page in PowerPoint, read our guide here.

B. Stress test your template

It is highly recommended that you test your template before you distribute it. That style you lot catch any errors before your users do.

Here are some ways yous can stress examination your template:

Endeavour to use it in a variety of different ways to come across if it breaks
Blazon in all kinds of dummy text
Delete things and turn them dorsum on again
Paste slides in from other templates to come across what happens in your template

Concluding Template Thoughts

And that'due south how to create a PowerPoint template that works the style information technology is supposed to.

Yous at present have the foundational skills to offset creating your ain PowerPoint templates and building cute and tailor-made presentations.

If you want to learn more about edifice and deploying your template in professional settings, I recommend checking out my step-by-step training form, see details here.

Every bit a quick recap of everything nosotros covered, yous learned how to:

Navigate the Slide Chief View,
Create and insert slide backgrounds, equally well equally hibernate groundwork graphics,
Format each of the elements on the Parent Slide layout,
Format each Child Layout and create your ain custom Kid Slide layouts,
Add and adjust the Guides on your Parent Slide layout,
And more than!

If you lot enjoyed this in-depth tutorial, you'll beloved our PowerPoint training courses and tutorials that you can learn more about here.

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