Jan's PowerPoint Basics: Masters

Consistency! By using a Master, you can easily keep important features of your slides and handouts the same - logo always in the same spot, titles and text line up neatly, same background, same fonts, same animations and transitions. Of course, you can change an individual slide when the defaults don't work well for that slide.

Starting with PowerPoint 2002, you can use more than one Master in the same presentation.

What can you control with a Master?

What is a placeholder?

A placeholder is a text box that PowerPoint uses when creating the outline for the presentation. PowerPoint has a set of default placeholders. You cannot add to the list. You cannot change a normal text box into a placeholder.

What is on a Master?

You can, of course, delete, move, and resize the placeholders on the Master. You can add images and other objects that you want to show on every slide or handout. Unhappily, you cannot create your own placeholders.

Step-by-Step: Master View

What you will learn:

to switch to Master view
to view Slide Master and Title Master
to view Handout Master
to view Notes Master

Start with:, issues.ppt from your Class disk

Switch to Masters View

From the menu select View | Master | Slide .

The Title Master shows in the Slide Pane and thumbnails show at the left for the Title and Slide masters. A new toolbar for Masters floats over the window.
Hover over each of the buttons on the new toolbar to see what they are for:
- Insert new master
- Insert new title master
- Delete master
- Preserve master
- Rename master
- Master layout

Viewing Slide Masters

PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 use the Navigation pane to show thumbnails of the various Slide and Title masters used in the presentation. Earlier versions don't allow multiple masters, so would be nothing much to show.

Move your mouse over the first thumbnail at the left and let it hover a moment. A popup tip tells you which Master this is and what slides actually use it. Cool!

Oddly, the Master Title is the second thumbnail at the left instead of the first. ??
When you make changes to a Master, check the slides listed in the popup tip to be sure your changes are happy ones.
Click on the first thumbnail. The Slide Master appears.

You can see the formatting for 5 bullet levels.
Click on the button Close Master View on the Slide Master View toolbar.

View Handout Master

From the menu select View | Masters | Handouts . The Handout Master appears with a new floating toolbar.
Select each of the print layouts on the Handout Master View toolbar. The Master changes to show where the slides or outline will sit on the page.
Close the view with the Close Masters View button on the floating toolbar.

View Notes Master

From the menu select View | Masters | Notes . The Notes Master appears with yet another new floating toolbar. At least this one is short!
Click the Master Layout button. (It's the only one beside the Close Master View button.)

A dialog appears listing the placeholders that can appear on this Master. All are gray! What's with that??

All of the placeholders are already in the Notes Master Layout. The dialog only allows you to check an item that is not already on the master. To delete a placeholder from a Master, you must delete it from the Slide Pane view.
Other Masters also have a Master Layout button with a list of placeholders available for that Master.
Close the Notes Master view.

PowerPoint Basics:
Master View

Available Masters

Why use a Master?

What can you control with a Master?

What is a placeholder?

What is on a Master?