The Slide Master is a special kind of slide that allows to modify the entire look and the visual features of a PowerPoint presentation. This lets you change the presentation slides globally instead of having to implement them slide by slide.
To summarize, the Slide Master is a unique facility that allows global control over all of your slides and specifically by managing:
Therefore using Slide Masters is a quick and efficient way to modify the look and the style of a presentation from one central location.
To enter and use the Slide Master:
- Select VIEW from the main PowerPoint Menu
- Click on Master. A little submenu will appear
- Click on the first item: Slide Master
Or simply hold the SHIFT key while clicking on the Normal View mode button positioned at the bottom left of the screen.
A ready made slide will appear on screen, with the following sample text on it : “Click to edit Master Title style”, and “Click to edit Master text styles” (the text may slightly vary depending on your PowerPoint version or set up).
Once inside the Slide Master you can control the following features across all of the presentation slides:
- font styles and font sizes.
[clicking in the Format Menu-> Font]
- Font colours and shadows.
- Title and text placement on the slide.
[by selecting with double click the text placeholder to be moved, and use the arrow keys].
- Placement of logos or images (that need to be displayed across all slides).
[click in the INSERT Menu ->Picture item].
- Placement of a background (that will appear on all the slides).
[Click in the Format Menu -> Background].
- Placement of dates, footnotes or slides numbers.
[Click in the VIEW Menu ->HEADER and FOOTER].
To verify whether all of the changes that you have applied to the Slide Master have been reflected across all of your slides, you need to enter the NORMAL VIEW mode, in which it is possible to view and modify each single slide. All changes made should indeed be reflected exactly across all of your slides.
In case that there will be slides where your formatting changes are not yet reflected you will need to go to those individual slides, select the Format Menu and having chosen "Apply Layout", select the button labeled "Reapply Layout", in this way all of the slides that did not reflect the changes you made in the Slide Master will immediately conform to it.
Remember that whenever you make a formatting change to the Slide Master, all other slides will update.
