Proper use of the PowerPoint slide master makes creating a presentation much easier and leads to more professional results. Many users find it a bit difficult to use it correctly. However, working with the slide master is relatively easy if you know how it works. We want to give you a brief overview of the tool with this article.
At first glance, working with PowerPoint Slide Master is the easiest thing in the world. In the “View” tab, click on the “Slide Master” field to quickly access the applications. Yet somehow many users shy away from using the slide master consistently. For this reason, we want to look into the subject a little.
The PowerPoint slide master takes a lot of work off your hands
Today, a presentation must be created absolutely professionally. Slides that look cobbled together somehow fail the audience mercilessly. Not only the content should be of high quality, but also the slide design. The set of slides should look “as if from a single mold”. Page numbers, headings, font sizes, colors, etc. should be placed the same on each slide. The PowerPoint slide master will do that for you. Here you can set the basic structure of each slide. If you design each slide individually, you will waste a lot of time, and small mistakes can quickly creep in. If you use certain elements throughout all the slides of your presentation, working with the slide master will save you a lot of time, as you only need to specify the elements once.
Creating a master slide in the PowerPoint slide master
The slide master allows you to create a master slide that will act as a blueprint for all the slides in your presentation. Everything you define in this master slide will be automatically transferred to all other slides. Therefore, you should start working on your slide set in the slide master first. If you set the date on the master slide, this information is fixed on all following slides and does not have to be selected again and again. If you subsequently decide to use a different date, you only need to change the corresponding day in the slide master. The date will then be automatically corrected on all other slides.
Set layout and design
Slide layouts define the formatting of your individual slides. Here you define where the headings, text fields, tables or images should be placed on the individual slides. The layouts also include colors, fonts and the slide background of a slide. Predefined designs are already included in PowerPoint. All you have to do is select them. You can change the default slide layouts in the Slides Master view. If you want to use a specific layout for a specific slide, first select the slide. On the menu bar click START, LAYOUT and choose the appropriate layout from the displayed templates. After that you can choose the design. A theme is a scheme of different colors, fonts, and background designs that PowerPoint provides for your slides.
Use different PowerPoint slide masters in one presentation
You can also use different designs for one presentation. For this purpose, you create different master slides with the respective slide layout. To do this, go to FOLIENMASTER and INSERT. Under the slide master used so far, another master slide appears, which you can provide with the desired slide layouts. To be able to work with several slide masters at the same time, you must switch off the MASTER EDIT function. In this case, the program asks whether the master should be deleted. Click NO. Now you can work with the second slide master. Under the LAYOUT section you will find both versions and when editing a new slide you can decide which version to use.
The PowerPoint slide master offers much more design possibilities. But just working with the existing layouts and designs makes Slide Master a valuable tool for your next presentation project. For more tips and tricks on how to present, sign up here to our newsletter.
Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Informatiker Matthias Garten as the expert for multimedia presentations and professional PowerPoint presentations knows about the art of professional slide design. He is an entrepreneur, speaker (TOP 100 Speaker), trainer (TOP 100 Excellence Trainer), multiple book author, presentation coach (presentation training), member of the GSA and Club 55, organizer of the Presentation Conference, Presentation Bootcamp and Presentation Rocket Day. In addition to PowerPoint and presentation training, he inspires and advises companies to present themselves even more effectively and thus stand out from competitors. He is the business owner of the presentation and PowerPoint agency smavicon Best Business Presentations and with his team has created over 10,000 professional PowerPoint presentations for over 150 industries since 1993.
