PresenterMedia Blog

I was recently asked the questions about how to remove elements from one of our animated PowerPoint templates.  Specifically, our subscriber wanted to remove the globe and keep the rest of the animation from this template. But she also wanted to keep the globe animation in other slides.

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

We recently had a question about how to remove the animation from one of our animated PowerPoint templates.   We utilize the themes feature of PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.  In most of our animated templates for PowerPoint we have included two complete themes.  The first theme is the animated theme, but there is also a complete set of layouts (a theme) which has all the animations removed and replaced with static imagery.

So how do you change between one and the other you ask?  It’s really easy.  Simply right click on top of the slide you wish to change the layout on and choose “Layout” from the menu that appears.

Here is a screen-shot of what you should see:

Choosing a Layout theme in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010

Most of our animated PowerPoint templates come with up to 19 pre-designed slide layouts.  Then each of those layouts has an animated and a static versions.

All of these layouts can be edited to your needs in the Slide Master view.  Find the slide master under the View tab.

I’ve found that its best to save your animated slides for special occasions where you need to call attention or you want to add a wow effect.  For most of your slides it is best to stick with a static page.  With PresenterMedia templates its easy to switch between a static and animated slide with a simple click of the mouse.

View our animated templates for PowerPoint here.

Good Presenting!

Art Holden