Master Slides

I have a useful tip for PowerPoint, so here's the scenario, you have a deck of slides to build, and you need to customize them with logo and such but you want to save time and avoid doing repeatitive copy+paste on the individual slides (especially for those logo which are to be placed in your slides). Here is my deck which is on Earth Hour 2009:

In order to begin customization work, click on the View tab, and select 'Slide Master' from the Presentation Views group.

This is how the Slide Master view looks like, all the different slide layouts are lined up on the left.

Like I mentioned earlier, I need to insert the logo into the slide. I do that by selecting on the layout (Title Slide Layout) in which I want this logo to be placed, click on the Insert Picture from the Insert tab. The logo which I will now insert is the WWF panda logo and after this the EarthHour logo.

Move these logos to the desired locations. I want these logos in the Title and Content Layout as well, so I have repeated these steps for that layout.

Hmm..I'm not too satisfied with the background gradient, let me do some adjustments first - Slide Master tab, Format Background and enter the changes in the dialog box.

You can also Insert Layout and Insert Placeholder from the Slide Master tab.

I have chosen to Rename my new layout with a picture placeholder 'Photo Layout'.


Now Close Master View (still in the Slide Master tab, far right) to return to the normal slide layout. I have inserted a new slide, and when I right-click to change the layout of the slide, I see the 'Photo Layout' there which I just created. Notice that my logos have appeared in my other slides too according to the layout (Title Slide Layout and Title and Content Layout) that was selected.

To insert a picture into the placeholder, I simply click on the icon and select the picture of my choice.

Don't forget to save the theme so that you can reuse it in future. Go to Design tab, click on the dropdown for Themes, and you will find the option to Save Current Theme where you will be prompted to rename the theme, please do not change the default path or location for theme to be saved in.

I feel Slide Master is important to save all that time we spend on copy + paste and rearranging elements in our slides, give this a try :)

Pasting Link?

I like this feature a lot. Here is a spreadsheet with figures and also a bar chart of the figures, which in this case is the yearly expenditure for printing in the company.

Now, assuming that I have a presentation to deliver, and I need this chart to be in one of the slides, I would typically, copy the slide (right-click + copy or Ctrl + C)

Ok my presentation deck is as shown, and I would like to place my copied chart in the Analysis slide here. I click on 'Paste' (Home tab) and choose 'Paste Special'. The dialog box opens, and I choose to Paste Link, the screen tip explains that Paste Link creates a shortcut to the source file so that any changes that occur will be reflected in the slide. Your chart is now in the slide you selected.

Back to the source file, let's check whether changes will be automated or not. I have just ammended the value for 2008, from '5605' to '7005'.


In powerpoint, right-click the chart, and choose to 'Update Link' and the change is reflected! Therefore if you have correctly pasted link for your charts, etc, when the values in the source file changes, these charts in your powerpoint slides will be updated when you open your deck.

Let me continue with my presentation slides. This presentation is about encouraging the company to 'Go Green', so right now I would like to visualize how one of the business processes is being done currently, and unfortunately it utilizes high amount of paper.

I remember seeing a diagram in an existing slide, so instead of redrawing it with shapes, text boxes, and icons, all I need to do is go to the Home tab, click on New Slide, and opt for the 'Reuse Slide' button.

A side pane will appear on the right, and here I will specify the path of the deck in which the diagram could be found by clicking on Browse > Browse File.

When you hover over the slides, you get a magnified view of it, and by clicking on it, the slides gets inserted into you current set of slides - much easier and faster than copy + paste right :)