Select Page

PowerPoint users may want to use formatting features to make slides more instructive or visually interesting. This does not need to take a lot of time to do.

Understanding two basic formatting toolsets in PowerPoint, the Slide Master and Themes, will help efficiently create characteristic slides for your teaching or presentations. These allow users to rapidly format entire slidedecks. After creating a set of common formatting, and boilerplate content if needed, users can create a PowerPoint template that allows them to pre-install those elements into any slidedeck subsequently created.

See the following links to better understand different PowerPoint features.

Understanding Layouts and the Slide Master

  • 00:57 Introduction to Slide Layouts
  • 02:25​ Editing the Slide Master (and Layouts)
  • 03:36 Simple Default Text Format Changes in the Slide Master
  • 04:51​ Adding a “Permanent” Graphic to Slides via the Slide Master
  • 08:07​ Change the Default Fonts for Your Slidedeck
  • 09:25​ Modifying Layouts and their Placeholders

Using and Modifying Themes

  • 00:56 Themes Basics
  • 02:08 Resize Your Slides
  • 02:26 Basic Theme Variants
  • 03:32​ Edit Theme Elements
  • 03:52​ Change Theme Background
  • 05:11 Change Default Color Set
  • 06:58 Change Default Font Set
  • 07:55 Save a Theme for Use in Other SlideDecks

Creating and Using Slidedeck Templates

  • 00:34 Using a Custom Template
  • 01:02​ Creating a Template
  • 02:54​ Pin a Template to Easily Find and Use It
  • 04:03 Modify an Existing Template

Submitted by: Tyler Kron-Piatek, academic technologist, COLI