Saving a Presentation as a Design Template

 Microsoft Office Specialist     If you spend a lot of time customizing the masters of a particular presentation and you think you might want to use the new design for future presentations, you can save the presentation as a new design template. For example, The Garden Company might customize the slide-title master pair of a presentation to include the company s logo and contact information; use a custom, nature- related background and leaf-shaped bullets; and format text in various shades of green. If they want all company presentations to have the same distinctive look, they can save the presentation as a design template. It will then be included as a choice in the Slide Design task pane for future PowerPoint presentations.

In this exercise, you will save a presentation as a design template.

USE the SaveTemplate presentation in the practice file folder for this topic. This practice file is located in the My Documents\Microsoft Press\PowerPoint 2003 SBS\ApplyingDesign\SavingPresent folder and can also be accessed by clicking Start/All Programs/Microsoft Press/PowerPoint 2003 Step by Step .

OPEN the SaveTemplate file.

1. On the File menu, click Save As .

   The Save As dialog box appears.

2. In the File name box, type DesignTemplate .

3. Click the down arrow to the right of the Save as type box, and click Design Template in the drop-down list.

   PowerPoint displays the default Templates folder.

   Important  

   Design templates have to be stored in the default Templates folder in order for them to show up automatically in the Slide Design task pane. If you store a template somewhere else, as you do in this exercise, you can click Browse at the bottom of the pane, navigate to the folder where the template is stored, and double- click the template to make it available.

4. On the Places bar, click the My Documents icon, and then navigate to the Microsoft Press\PowerPoint 2003 SBS\ApplyingDesign\SavingPresent folder.

5. Click Save .

   PowerPoint saves the template in the specified folder.

CLOSE the DesignTemplate template, and if you are not continuing on to the next chapter, quit PowerPoint.

Smart Tags

 New in Office 2003   ”  Smart tags    If you frequently use certain types of information, such as the date and time, names , street addresses, or telephone numbers , in PowerPoint presentations, you can turn on the smart tag feature so that PowerPoint will recognize the information. On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options. click the Smart Tags tab, select the "Label text with smart tags" check box, and click OK. PowerPoint then displays a dotted line under the text to indicate that it has been flagged with a smart tag. Pointing to the underlined text displays the Smart Tag Actions button. You can click this button to display a menu of options for performing common tasks associated with that type of information.