A presentation is like a train. An unbroken chain of coaches follows the engine and goes where it leads. The Slide Master is the engine which drives the wait of the entire presentation. It is as well the all-time time saving shortcut for making mass changes to all your slides from i place.

Imagine you lot had a presentation with two dozen slides. To alter one tiny element, you would take to move through all the slides making the changes one at a fourth dimension. Just what if yous could alter just ane slide and have it applied automatically to all the remaining ones?

Make Formatting Easier With A Slide Master

Slide masters are like special templates only merely more than overarching. As the proper noun suggests, it is the topmost slide in the deck that contains all the information about the theme, layouts, colors, and fonts that yous want to accept in all the slides.

You can use multiple slide masters in one presentation. Each volition be responsible for a group of slides and their unique layout under it. The hierarchy looks like this:

Now that you have an idea of slide masters, let'southward take a deeper dive into them. The instructions below apply to the slide master in Microsoft PowerPoint 2016, 2019, and Microsoft 365.

How To Open up Slide Master In PowerPoint

The Slide Primary has its own tab on the Ribbon. To view the Slide Master, go to View > Slide Master.

The Slide Master tab in PowerPoint has all the tools you lot need to command the formatting.

The left pane displays the slide layout for your presentation. The Slide Master is the topmost slide in the hierarchy and looks like the blank content slide you get when y'all start a fresh presentation.

The controls are organized into specific groups with obvious functions:

Edit Main:  Use this group to edit the Slide Main. You tin add together another master slide with the Insert Slide Master push button, or you tin utilise the Insert Layout push button to add a new layout under an existing Master.

The Preserve button ensures that PowerPoint does not delete the Slide Master if information technology'southward not in use. Select the slide, then click Preserve. A pushpin icon next to the master slide shows that it is now preserved.

Master Layout: Use this group to add together or remove elements like the championship, and footers. by adding or removing placeholders, the title, and PowerPoint footers.

Edit Theme: The controls in this grouping let you apply a pre-built theme or utilise a custom theme with the main slides.

Background: Set the background for the Slide Masters or the Layout Masters.

Size: Select the slide size and the orientation according to the requirements of your presentation.

In the following sections we will see how to make changes to a slide master that will automatically reflect on the slides that follow it.

What Are Layout Masters?

Of form, some slides tin can differ in their layouts from one another. Some of your slides volition be designed for images, some for text, while some tin can have animation. These are controlled by another type of thematic slide called the Layout Master.

These are subordinate to the Master Slide. And every Master Slide tin have several Layout Masters. For instance, the Championship layout is a blazon of Layout Master.

Y'all tin can use one Layout Master for all slides that display text. Another for images… and then on. Change an chemical element in one layout master slide and all dependent slides will modify with it. You don't have to mess with each slide.

Working on designing a Layout Primary slide is similar to modifying a PowerPoint template.

Thus, the Slide Chief and Layout Masters in PowerPoint can not only help you build your presentations quickly but update it in the time to come too. Anyone else in your team tin can come in and make changes without going dorsum and forth betwixt the slides. A library of pre-congenital designs can too help yous change the layout of a plain presentation with only a few clicks.

Format A Presentation Using Slide Masters

The slide master as we have seen has a default layout. You can utilise that or showtime from scratch with your own design.

1. Get to the Slide Master View.

From the View tab on the Ribbon, click the Slide Chief button in the Master Views grouping.

two. The Slide Principal tab on the Ribbon.

The Slide Primary tab on the Ribbon is displayed. A new Slide Master appears with PowerPoint's default layout.

three. Modify the Slide Master

The Slide Main has default placeholders for the title slide, sub-headings, footer, date, and more. Make whatsoever formatting changes you want to this plain slide. Yous tin can also pick from PowerPoint'due south available themes to design the Slide Primary.

To choose the elements in the Slide Principal, you can also click on Main Layout and then uncheck the place holders y'all exercise not want.

4. Modify the Layout Masters

Every theme has several slide layouts. Choose the layouts to lucifer your slide content. Some are better for text, some for comparisons, and some are better for graphics.

You tin blueprint your own custom layouts from scratch by clicking on Insert Layout from the Edit Primary group.

Like a default layout just want to tweak it slightly? Correct click on the said layout slide thumbnail on the left and choose Duplicate Layout. Too, delete the layout masters that y'all don't need with the right-click shortcut or the Delete push button on the tab. PowerPoint offers around 25 layouts to choose from and y'all may not need them all.

five. Apply the Layouts

Click the Close Master View button on the Slide Primary tab on the Ribbon to return to Normal View.

In the thumbnail pane, click the slide that you desire to reapply the updated layout to. Go to the Home tab > Slides group > Click Layout. Select the layout that you created in Slide Primary View. Y'all can besides select multiple slide thumbnails and apply a common layout to them.

Near of your presentation will be controlled past the layout masters. Just think to re-use the layouts to the relevant slides if you go back and change something in the layout masters.

Brand Your Masters Before You lot Offset On Your Slides

HTML documents have way sheets. Word documents have styles. And, PowerPoint has Slide Masters. These are printing blocks that make annihilation that comes later on they are made a lot easier. A PowerPoint design can exist refurbished and made spanking new with a few tweaks to the master slides.

You only saved a lot of fourth dimension with the master slides. Put that fourth dimension to better use to piece of work on the actual content and make your PowerPoint more engaging to the audience.