Creating a PowerPoint Template, Part 1

Creating a Complete PowerPoint Template

This article reprinted with permission from All 'Bout Computers.

Part I: Creating Slide Masters

Ready to create your own templates? This tutorial will walk you through the steps to create a fully enabled template from a blank presentation.

What do I need for a fully enabled template?

Templates in PowerPoint are made up of a number of elements:

Master slides

There are a maximum of two master slides: the Slide Master and the Title Master. These slides contain the common elements and formatting for the slides in your presentation. All of the slides in your presentation are based on one of these two masters. The Slide Master is inserted automatically. The Title Master must be inserted manually.
Master for notes page

There is one master for the notes page. This page generally contains a small picture of the slide at the top, with a space for speaker's notes on the bottom. It also can contain headers and footers at the designer's choice. Changeable items on this master include the size of the slide and the format and placement of the text items.
Master for handouts

There are six masters for the handouts page, one for each printable handout style: All you are able to change on these masters is the content and style of the headers and footers. Furthermore, all though there are six handout masters, changes made on any given handout master are reflected on each of the other handout masters.

To ensure that your template is fully enabled, you need to format each of these masters in turn. This article will lead you through the steps to do this. To start, open a new presentation. You can base this presentation on an existing template, or you can base it on the "Blank" template. For the purposes of this tutorial, use the blank template. Do not add any slides to the presentation.

To start work on your template, you must view the existing slide master. You get here by selecting the "Master" option on the "View" menu. Slide left from the word Master and select "Slide Master". The slide master should appear, with black text in Times Roman on a white background.

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Create a background for your slides

The first thing to do is to decide what you want on your background. You have several choices, all of which can be found by right clicking on the master slide and selection "Background". This will bring up an option window. On the bottom of this window, is a white filled box with a drop down arrow to its left. Clicking the arrow reveals the options that allow you to....

Create a plain color background - To select this option, select the color you desire. You will see a default set of eight colors to choose from, as well as other options. If you do not like any of the default colors, select "More Colors" and pick the color you desire from these expanded options.
Create a gradient background - To select this option, select "Fill Effects" from the drop down list. The first tab on the resulting window lets you either pick a pre-created gradient or create your own. Play around with the options and see which one you like.
Use an existing texture square for your background - To select this option, select "Fill Effects" from the drop down list. The second tab will show you a list of the available textures to use. Since textures are graphics, the picture you see will be tiled on your slide to create a full background. If you have a graphic you wish used as a tile, click Other Texture" and select your graphic.
Create a patterned background - To select this option, select "Fill Effects" from the drop down list. The third tab will show you a set of 46 patterns. In addition, the two boxes at the bottom of the tab allow you to choose the background and foreground colors to be used for the pattern.
Use an existing graphic for your background - To select this option, select "Fill Effects" from the drop down list. The fourth tab will allow you to navigate to and select your graphic. It will preview your graphic once you have selected it. Where texture makes your graphic into a tile for the background, picture stretches it to cover the entire slide.

If you use an animated gif or a transparent gif for your background, it will neither show as transparent nor animate. It will be merely inserted as graphic.

Once you have selected your background, you will return to the "Background" window. Here you can either preview your background or apply it. Further, you have the option to apply it to just the current slide or all slides. In this case, your slide master is the only slide, so after you preview it, click “Apply”.

Determine which elements will show on each slide

The next step is to decide what additional graphical elements you want on each slide. Examples are company logos, signature shapes and graphics, and design related items. In addition, you may a picture or a graphic on each slide. This is the step to add those items as well. Be careful with what you add. The items you add here will show up on each slide. You need to be sure that you are not adding so many items that you leave no room for the elements of your individual slides.

If you decide to add elements purely for design purposes, such as shapes and swooshes, keep them clean and in keeping with the colors you used in your background.

Next, you need to determine what will show in your header and footer of each slide. Do you want the page number on each slide? Do you want the date on each slide? Each of these elements is controlled by the "Header and Footer" window, found on the "View" menu. Be sure to notice the bottom check box on this window. It allows you to turn on footer elements on your content slides, but leave them off of your title slides.

In general, the busier your slide background, the less you want to add to the slide master. A simple background supports more elements than a complicated one, but even there simple and sparse is better than complicated and crowded.

Format the text on your slides

Now that you have the graphical background of your slides done, it is time to be creative with the text. You format the text on your master slides just as you would on a regular slide. You can change the font, the color, the size, etc. Make sure that your font color is a complementary one to your background, but will still show from the necessary distance.

You have two options to change here that you do not have on the content slides: Changing the indent on the sub-bullets and changing the look of the bullets. Changing the indentation is done with the ruler at the top of the slide. Changing the bullet look is done via the "Bullets and Numbering" item on the "Format" menu. If you really want to get fancy, you can even select a picture for your bullet.

One more hint: Say you have a busy background, but you want the text to show on a contrasting color. Right click and select "Format Placeholder". This will bring up a window much like the AutoShape format box and allow you to change the look of your text placeholder. If you do change the color of your placeholder's background, I recommend turning on the "Resize AutoShape to fit text" option. This step will allow the colored area to grow and shrink with the text on your slide.

Define the animations for your slides

The next item to define for your template is how you want elements to become visible when the presentation is running. Do you want all of the master elements to appear at once, as soon as the slide appears? That is the easiest to set up - you don't have to do anything. When the slide show is run, the elements will appear immediately without any effects. However, this is not likely to be the case on all of your presentations.

The most likely change you will want to make is to define on the master how the text on content slides will appear. This gives you a head start for your main slides, and keeps your presentation consistent and professional looking. The next most likely change you will want to make is to animate your logo in some manner so that it stands out.

You set animation effects by using "Custom Animation" on the "Slide Show" menu. You will want to define both the order items appear and the effect used to cause the item to appear.

Remember: If you wish to adjust the animation for items in the header or footer of your slides or for master element graphics, you need to do it here on the master. There is no other place to do it, as these elements are not able to be selected individually on the content slides.

While I do recommend setting up the base animations for your slides, I do not recommend that you set a standard sound to be played with each slide change. If you feel that sounds on each slide transition are necessary put yourself in the audience's shoes before you do so. If you are creating a show that will have more than 20 or so slides, will that sound be as affective after it has been heard 20 times as you want it to be? Chances are, not really.

Watch for the second half of this article, Creating a Complete PowerPoint Template, Part II, where I will discuss Title Masters, Handout Masters, Notes Masters, Color Schemes, and Saving Templates. This article will be available in early March, 2003.

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