You can change the color theme of a template by selecting “Colors” under the design tab on the PowerPoint ribbon.

Here is a video showing how themes work in out templates.

The video also demonstrates how easy it is to replace graphics in our templates.

Watch the video to see how to change colors and graphics in our PowerPoint templates.

You can also create a custom colors for our templates by creating your own color pallet. You can learn how to create your own color theme here.

View all our PowerPoint Templates here.

We get several suggestions and requests asking for different color variations of our presentation clipart.  We’ve tried to honor all of those requests as we get them, but this is a much better solution.  Wish that stick figure was red instead of blue?  It’s now just a quick adjustment away and you can download it right away.

Here is a video showing the color changer in action:

Click the play button to see how our color changer works.

Give it a try, and we’d love to hear your feedback.  If it looks like our subscribers like the new feature, we’ll roll it out to the animations as well.

All our clip art images can be downloaded as a PNG with a transparent background.  We have already done all the hard work of isolating the image for you.

Try out our new color changer on our PowerPoint Clip Art.

Here is a quick way to check if you have the Office 2007 service Pack 2 installed in PowerPoint 2007.

Find PowerPoint Options at the bottom of the menu that appears when you click the Office Button in the upper right corner of your screen.  See screen shot below.

Find PowerPoint 2007 Options by clicking on the Office Button

Under PowerPoint Options, Click on resources.  The exact version number of PowerPoint 2007 you are using will be listed on at the bottom of the window that appears.  See screen shot below.

Finding the exact version of PowerPoint you are using.

In the version number if you see SP2 indicated, then you are currently have Office 2007 Service Pack 2 installed.  If SP2 does not appear, you should update your installation by clicking “Get Updates” at the top of this window.

Good Presenting!

Here is another article from our blog about updating PowerPoint 2007 to Service Pack 2.

The animated PowerPoint Template used in this tutorial.
Download animated templates here.

This is a great question, and it gives me an opportunity to better explain how the slide master works.

This tutorial applies to PowerPoint 2010, 2008(mac) and 2007.

The Slide Master Explained

The heart of a PowerPoint template is the Slide Master.  To view the slide master – choose View>Slide Master.

Slide Master View in PowerPoint

It controls all the default layouts and various pre-designed slides that are included in our templates.  Each Slide Master can have any number of layout pages beneath it.  Think of the Slide Master as the template for the template.  You can have multiple Slide Masters, and each Master can have multiple layouts attached to it.  It’s powerful but a bit confusing at first.

Take a look at this screen-shot, the slide at the top is the Master, everything beneath and indented is a layout attached to the Master.

The Slide Master and the attached Layouts

Adding and Subtracting Items from the Slide Master

An element or image placed on the Slide Master is copied to any layout page attached to the Master. (There is a way to hide Slide Master graphics on the attached layouts.  This is explained at the end.)  So in our example, if you remove the globe from the Slide Master, the top slide in the illustration above, it is also removed from all the layout pages of the template.

That’s great if you don’t want the globe to appear anywhere in the template,  but the original problem was we wanted the globe animation to appear only on select slides, not get rid of it completely.

There are a couple of things you could do at this point.

1. Cut the animation from the Slide Master and then Paste it into the individual layouts where you want it to appear.

Any element you place on a layout slide, will only appear in your presentation when you choose that layout.  This is a fine, but if you start adding elements to the layouts, it can quickly get confusing where the final resting place for that element is.  Is that picture on a actual slide, on a layout, or is it on the Slide Master?

2. Duplicate the Slide Master

This is my favorite option.  Because you can have multiple Slide Masters in your template, you can duplicate the Slide Master.

Choose ‘Duplicate Slide Master’ from the menu after you right click top of the Slide Master.  Now with this new Slide Master, in our example, you can have a complete set of new layouts without the globe animation, and a complete set with the animation.

A second Slide Master is created with the globe animation removed.

Now after exiting the Slide Master view, you have a completely new set of layouts available to you in the normal PowerPoint view.

Your new Slide Master layouts now appear when you select Layouts

Hiding Graphics Used on the Slide Master

You may notice that by deleting the globe from the slide master that the globe still exists on the Title Slide Layout.  This is because the Title Slide Layout has its own graphical elements and all the elements from the Slide Master are hidden.

The Title Slide Layout is hiding the graphics from the Slide Master.

If you right click on the layout you wish to edit, you can choose ‘Hide Background Graphics”.  This effectively removes all the graphical elements from the Slide Master.  In this example a different version of the globe animation has been added directly to the Title Page Layout so the template has another look.

Hide Background Graphics to remove Slide Master graphics from layout pages.

One note of warning, if you hide the background graphics you will need to copy and paste any images or videos you wish to continue to use directly into the layout you are modifying.

In Closing

It can be confusing, but once you have worked with the Slide Master and it’s layouts it gets pretty easy.  Just remember when editing our templates, first start editing on the Slide Master.  If you cannot remove or change what you want there, then move on to looking at the attached Layout slides.  If your still have questions, feel free to contact our customer support.

Good Presenting!

Art Holden

Animated GIFs work great in PowerPoint for Mac

This is all great unless you’ve been running PowerPoint 2008 for Mac.  The original version of PowerPoint 2008 didn’t have good support for the venerable animated GIF format.  But Microsoft has come to the rescue with an update to PowerPoint 2008.   The update is called the Office 2008 Service Pack 2 and it was released in July of 2009.

This free update fixes various issues and adds complete support for animated .GIFs.  If you’ve been updating your software all along, you likely are already running this patch.  But if you are experiencing difficulties with our animated gif animations in Mac PowerPoint 2008, it’s likely that you need to update your software.

Update PowerPoint 2008 to use animated gifs.

Here is a link to the Office 2008 Service Pack 2 for Mac.  You’ll want to browse for downloads at the bottom of the page to find the appropriate download.

Typically an animated GIF is set to loop over and over again forever and ever.  After a while this can get distracting for your audience if you spend any amount of time on a slide.  Wouldn’t it be great if the animation would just stop after a few moments?

With this in mind, we’ve added an new feature to our custom animation (GIF) creator in our animations section.  You can now set the number of times our animations loop before they stop.

Control the number of loops in an animated .GIF

By clicking the Number of Loops area in the customizer, you can set the animation to loop one to six times or choose to let if repeat indefinitely.

I particularly like choosing one or two loops for animations in my presentations as this give just enough time to spark the slide without becoming a distraction to my message.

For now, the set number of loops only works with .GIF images created with our customizer.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Our animated templates require that you have an updated installation of Office 2007.  Periodically Microsoft has released updates and patches for Office 2007.  These updates are free from Microsoft and can be accessed through “Windows Update”  on your computer.

Use Windows Update to Update PowerPoint 2007

We recommend that you install all updates suggested for Microsoft Office 2007 by using Windows Update.  But specifically, a PowerPoint 2007 user needs to make sure they have installed “The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2.”   This service pack can be downloaded here: 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2

Update PowerPoint 2007 to play PowerPoint 2010 video

Installing this Office 2007 update brings your version of PowerPoint 2007 up to speed and allows it to play the embedded video that is contained in our animated templates.

View all our animated templates for PowerPoint here.

Problems with Video Playback in PowerPoint 2007

It has also been brought to our attention that if you do not have the most recent version of Windows Media Player, you may experience poor video playback in PowerPoint 2007.  This typically looks like green streaks running through the video animation in our templates.

Since our animated templates are created in PowerPoint 2010 and then made backward compatible with PowerPoint 2007, the newest version of Windows Media Player is required.  This is Media Player 11 for Windows XP and Media Player 12 for Vista and Windows 7 users.

If you are experiencing this problem, simply run Windows Media Player and then check for updates from the help menu.

You can access the Slide Master by clicking on the view tab on the PowerPoint Ribbon.

Slide Master View in PowerPoint

Under the Slide Master you will find all the elements we have used to create the overall design of the template.  If you are editing an animated template, you will find the video files here that we use.  Also each swoosh, swoop, design box or divider we use in the template is located here as well.

Note: one exception is the 3D clip art we use is placed directly on the individual slides and is not part of the Slide Master.

There are typically several elements layered on top of each other, so you’ll want to have the selection pane open as well.

Opening the Selection Pane In PowerPoint 2010

Under the home tab in the ribbon, choose Select > Selection Pane.  The selection pane gives a list of all the elements that are on the slide and in what order they are stacked on top of each other.  Tip: This is a great way to get to an element that might be hidden beneath a text box or other element.

Selection Pane in PowerPoint 2010

For this tutorial I’m using the Global Energy template by PresenterMedia artist Josh Doohen.

Download Global Energy PowerPoint Template here.

By selecting different elements, moving and deleting, it was simple to create these distinct slide looks from the original title slide.

Creating a Custom Color Theme in PowerPoint

A great template for PowerPoint can make building a presentation so much easier and quicker.  I thought I would explain the steps I go through in building templates for PresenterMedia.   In this tutorial I will explain the method for creating a custom color theme in PowerPoint.  I am going to be using the newest version of PowerPoint 2010, but the steps are virtually the same for PowerPoint 2007.

While creating a color theme or palette is easy, choosing good colors to use can be difficult.   So I am going to start with explaining how I choose colors to use in my templates.  If I’m working for a client I typically try to start with a color in the the clients logo or other reference material the customer provided.

Lets take this sample logo for example.

Sample logo to use in a PowerPoint Template

I am going to build a color palette around the bright blue rings.  In choosing colors for a presentation I like to choose a variety of neighboring and complementary colors to the main color I have chosen.  I have a couple of favorite sites I use to generate complementary colors for my templates.  A great tool is the Color Scheme Chooser at Websitetips.com.

I opened the logo in PhotoShop and determined the RGB value of the rings was 0 112 255.  Using the online color generator I was given these complementary colors related to main color.

Screen Shot of on-line Color Chooser

Now that I have a good selection of colors to choose from, I go to PowerPoint and create a custom color theme.  Under the “Design” tab on the ribbon, choose “Colors > Create New Theme Colors”

Create a Custom Color Theme

This opens up the various customizable colors the presentation will use for everything from your text to background colors to the colors used in your charts and graphs.  From the list of colors I generated, I will choose the colors to use as my accent colors and as my Text/Background – Light/Dark 2.  I typically leave the first two settings alone as you almost always want a black and white setting.

Custom Color Panel in PowerPoint

Once you have filled in the color values for the various accent colors, give your new theme a name and click save.

There you have it, you’ve created a custom color theme that you can use for your template or any other presentation you may make.  This is especially helpful if you have a set of corporate colors you need to use for business communications.  Once you’ve created the color theme for your company you can use it over and over again.

Here is a sample of the color theme I created:

Sample slide using custom colors.

I will continue this series of tutorials on building PowerPoint templates by discussing how to set up your slide master and page layouts.

Good Presenting!

Art Holden
Check out the templates for PowerPoint I’ve created here.

I’m going to use PowerPoint 2007 for this tutorial but the process is the same for PowerPoint 2010.

Step 1

Open up the presentation you are making and the template you want to copy a slide from.

Step 2

In the template, right click on the slide in the slides tab or in the slide sorter view you wish to copy and choose copy from the menu.  See illustration below.

How to copy a slide in PowerPoint

Step 3

Paste your slide you just copied in the presentation you are working on.  Right click in the slides tab or the slide sorter view at the place you wish to insert (paste) the slide.

How to Paste a slide from another presentation

Step 4

Click the “Paste Options” icon which appear beneath the slide you just pasted.  By default the slide is formatted according to the settings of your current presentation.  In order for the slide to retain the look of the slide from the template you copied from, you need to tell PowerPoint to use the formatting from the slides source.

In the Paste Options you can choose “Keep Source Formatting”.  This retains the format from the template you copied from.

Click Keep Source Formatting in the Paste Options

Nice and simple right?  Go ahead and start putting together your favorite slides from all of our templates.

Good Presenting!

Art Holden

You can download our templates for PowerPoint here.