How do you create a new template in powerpoint

When you create a template, add any content to the slide master in Slide Master view that you want to protect from being changed by users of your template, such as instructional prompt text, logos, header and footer information, subject matter content, a background, formatting, colors, fonts, and effects.

Users of your template will work in Normal view, guided by the instructional prompts that you added. The template users will replace the instructional prompt text and other placeholder content with data that is specific to their own project or presentation. In the slide thumbnail pane, the slide master represents the larger slide image, and the associated layouts are positioned beneath it.

Many presentations contain more than one slide master, so you may have to scroll to find the one that you want. To remove any of the built-in slide layouts that accompany the default slide master, in the slide thumbnail pane, right-click each slide layout that you don't want to use, and then click Delete Layout. To remove an unwanted, default placeholder, in the slide thumbnail pane, click the slide layout that contains the placeholder, click the border of the placeholder in the presentation window, and then press DELETE.

To add a text placeholder, in the slide thumbnail pane, click the slide layout that you want to contain the placeholder, and then do the following:. To add other types of placeholders that contain content such as pictures, clip art, SmartArt graphics, charts, movies, sounds, and tables, on the Slide Master tab, in the Master Layout group, click the type of placeholder that you want to add.

To apply a theme to include color, formatting, effects, in a layout to your presentation, on the Slide Master tab, in the Edit Theme group, click Themes , and then click a theme.

To change the background, on the Slide Master tab, in the Background group, click Background Styles , and then click a background. To set the page orientation for all of the slides in your presentation, on the Slide Master tab, in the Page Setup group, click Slide Orientation , and then click either Portrait or Landscape. To add text to appear in the footer at the bottom of all of the slides in your presentation, do the following:.

In the Header and Footer dialog box, on the Slide tab, select the Footer check box, and then type the text that you want to appear at the bottom of your slides.

For more information about using footers, see Show footer information on your slides. If you need assistance applying your new template to a presentation, see Apply a template to a new presentation.

You can't create a template in PowerPoint for the web. You have to use a desktop version of PowerPoint instead. Design your slides. Create and save a PowerPoint template. To make changes to the slide master or slide layouts, on the Slide Master tab, do any of the following: To add a colorful theme with special fonts and effects, click Themes , and choose a theme from the gallery. To change the background, click Background Styles , and choose a background. To add a placeholder to hold text, a picture, chart, video, sound, and other objects , in the thumbnail pane, select the slide layout that you want to hold the placeholder, and do the following: Click Insert Placeholder , and select the type of placeholder you want to add.

On the slide master or slide layout, click and drag to draw the placeholder size. Select Save. After resizing your background image, you will want to send it back behind the other Parent Slide elements. This will send the background behind the text as shown in the picture below.

This makes all the Parent Slide content placeholders visible again on your slide. This will make it hard for people to read my slides during a presentation.

In the steps below, I will use the old method non-Office subscription for creating a transparent background in PowerPoint. If you have an Office subscription , you can see the brand new way to create a transparent image, see our guide here for details.

Using the gradient fill options described above, your rectangle should look like the one above, with some of your text bleeding through the rectangle. As a final step, right-click your gradient rectangle and select Send to Back and then Send Backward enough times 5 times so that it sits behind your placeholders but on top of your pattern background image. At this stage, notice that because we properly added these design elements to our Parent Slide, they automatically populate on all the Child Slides.

This shows you the power of creating a PowerPoint template — you add a design element in one place, and it shows up throughout your presentation. Consider guides as the grid on your slide that is used to consistently align your objects.

To add a new guide, simply start dragging an existing one, and then hit the Ctrl key on your keyboard before you let go.

There are a number of ways in which you can format your placeholders and there is no right or wrong formatting. You set these on your Slide Master so that they are locked when people fill them in when building their PowerPoint slides using your template. To learn all about the Outline View in PowerPoint and how to use it, read our article here. You can change the font size, alignment, size, position, etc.

Before you start formatting your placeholders, make sure you are on your Parent Slide. We will focus on formatting your Child Slide layouts later. Next, adjust the size and position of your title placeholder. To do that, simply select the placeholder and:. There is no right size and position for your title. Make sure the placeholder is big enough to fit the typical scenario.

Unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise, I recommend that you choose Bottom for your vertical text alignment. That way your title text will always stay perfectly aligned at the bottom, from slide to slide. This helps avoid jumping titles for any slides that have more than one line of text.

On the flip side, if you plan on having short titles for all your slides no more than one line , I recommend using the Middle text alignment instead. Regardless of what you decide, make sure you test different title lengths to see what will work best for your PowerPoint template. Adjusting your guides like this will make aligning objects on your slides much easier as your Smart Guides will automatically snap them together. That will turn them on.

Alternatively, you can go up to the View tab in the Ribbon and select Guides inside the Show area. 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 it makes it a lot easier to make fast and consistent changes to swathes of content down the road. Later in this template series, I will show you how to format away from this default behavior on the Child Slides. But first you want to set its default formatting. To do that:.

In this step, you need to align the horizontal and the vertical guides to that they align with the Text placeholder. The next step is to change the font size of the different levels of text inside the placeholder.

Next, you have to adjust the indent of the bulleted lists so that it appears in all your slide layouts. You can adjust the bullets as per your personal preference. Based on your knowledge of how someone is going to be using this template, you might decide to add more or less space as required. You can see their book on templates here. This inevitably happens with templates and you want to be prepared for it! In the Size section, verify that the height of the placeholders is the same.

Remember to also add new guides around these placeholders to help keep them in place. Note: For the slide number placeholder, you can also add symbols as I have here such as a bar and two spaces , in order to create a visual break from the other placeholders.

The next thing is to format the date and time footer placeholder. You can choose any kind of formatting you like. The final default placeholder to format on the Parent Slide here is the footer text placeholder. This way, it is next to the logo and the text inserted will extend out towards the right.

While all the default placeholders have now been set up and formatted correctly, there is still one element that you can add on the Parent Slide of your Slide Master; and that is a logo. You can also use this same technique to add a watermark to your PowerPoint slides. To see the different ways to do this, read our guide here. The Child Slides represent the blueprints for each type of slide included in your template. By default, your Child Slide layouts will inherit your Parent Slide formatting, but as you will see, you can tweak these layouts to meet your individual needs.

The key to designing good Child Slide layouts is to keep in mind how the end-user is likely going to insert content on each type of slide.

You want to make it easy for everyone to quickly fill them in when using your template. The first step is to edit the Title slide layout. This layout is designed to be filled in with the title and general information about your presentation. Typically, its looks slightly different than the rest of the layouts. The first thing we need to do when formatting our Title slide layout is to think about the background.

Typically, a Title slide will have a slightly different background from the regular Content slides. However, because the background has been set on the Parent Slide, this means that you will have to deviate from it. The first method for hiding anything on the background graphics such as the logo, background patterns, design elements, etc.

To do that, with the rectangle still selected, go to the Shape Format tab on the Ribbon, click on the Send Backward dropdown and select Send to Back. This includes and background images or patterns, logos, and other design elements. You can easily make them visible again by unchecking the Hide Background Graphics checkbox. While the background image can be different, we want to keep the theme consistent across all our slides.

First, navigate back to the Parent Slide and select the pattern image without the gradient. Note: Pasting an object directly into your slide background like this means that it can no longer be edited in your PowerPoint template. If instead you paste it onto the slide as an image, you can always go back in and make adjustments to the image, and therefore the background too. The next step is to add in a design element that matches the general theme and style of the template.

To do that, right-click the rectangle, open the Send Backward dropdown and select Send to Back. First, adjust your Title and Subtitle placeholders.

To do that, simply select the two placeholders and:. Change the fonts. Need more help? Expand your skills. Get new features first. A subscription to help make the most of your time. For up to 6 people. Premium apps. Try 1 month free. Was this information helpful? Yes No. Select Personal or Custom. The name varies, depending on circumstance. Tip: If you don't see Personal or Custom then you probably don't have any templates stored in your templates folder. Create and save one, or use the steps in the next section to copy a template to that folder.

Did you receive a template, via download, email, or other method, that you'd like to add to PowerPoint? Copy or save your template. Switch to the new file, right-click the thumbnail pane, and under Paste Options select Use Destination Theme :.

You can mark your personal template to be an option on the default Featured tab.