Making Your Presentation Look Consistent

PowerPoint comes with two special slides called masters “Slide Master and Title Master. The Slide Master and Title Master for a template are called a slide-title master pair. You can create more than one Slide Master or Title Master within a presentation. This is useful for creating separate sections within the same presentation. To create multiple masters in a presentation, you can insert a new Slide Master and Title Master in a presentation or apply more than one template to your presentation.

The Slide Master controls the properties of every slide in the presentation. All of the characteristics of the Slide Master (background color, text color , font, and font size) appear on every slide in the presentation. When you make a change on the Slide Master, the change affects every slide. For example, if you want to include your company logo, other artwork, or the date on every slide, you can place it on the Slide Master. The Slide Master contains master placeholders for title text, paragraph text, date and time, footer information, and slide numbers . The master title and text placeholders control the text format for every slide in a presentation. If you want to make a change throughout your presentation, you need to change each slide master or pair of masters. For example, when you change the master title text format to italic, the title on each slide changes to italic to follow the master. If, for a particular slide, you want to override the default settings on the Slide Master, you can use the commands on the Format menu. For example, if you want to omit background graphics on a slide, you can use that option in the Background dialog box for the selected slide.

The title slide has its own master, called the Title Master . Changes that you make to the Title Master affect only the title slide of the presentation. Like the Slide Master, the Title Master contains placeholders. The main difference between the Slide Master and the Title Master is the Title Master's use of a master subtitle style instead of the master text style. The Slide Master and Title Master appear together in Slide Master view. You can select either master as a slide miniature in Slide Master view to make changes to it. When you view a master, the Master toolbar appears. This toolbar contains the Close Master View button, which returns you to the view you were in before you opened the Master. The Master toolbar also contains several buttons to insert, delete, rename, duplicate, and preserve masters. When you preserve a master, you protect it from being deleted.

Each master contains placeholders. Background objects, such as text and graphics that are entered into placeholders will appear on every page associated with that master. Examples of objects that you may want to include are your company name, logo, or product name . You can modify and arrange placeholders on all of the master views for the date and time, footers, and slide numbers, all of which appear on the Slide Master in the default position. You can also customize the position of the placeholders. PowerPoint also comes with a Handout Master and a Notes Master, where you can add text and graphics.