PresenterMedia Blog

We are often asked how easy it is to change our PowerPoint templates.   Everything in our templates can be moved, sized, copied or deleted from the template.   I thought I would show some of the things you can do with our templates.  In order to make these changes you will need to be slightly familiar with the Slide Master and how it works to control the layout and the design of a PowerPoint template.

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.

While we try to offer you a wide range of pre-designed layouts in our templates, often you need something just a little bit different.  Not to worry, our templates come with many easy to manipulate customizable elements to change the whole look of you presentation.

When we are building our PPT templates, we try to leave as many as the design elements intact so they may be further customized.  For example we will use PNG images with transparent background and then layer them in PowerPoint.  You can then take those design elements and make more modifications to them.  Using PowerPoint built in tools, you can change the color, add effects, move, resize, copy and paste to another page, or completely remove the elements from your presentation.

For example I’ll use this template created by PresenterMedia artist, Judd Albrecht.

Image: Atom Molecule PowerPoint Template

The large image of the atom can be removed, resized, recolored, or used in other pages.  Here I have resized the atom element to fit with the title.  I used the picture recolor tool to change the atom and the swooshes to a lavender color.  I also removed the logo place holder in the lower right-hand corner.  Here is the end result.

After Customization of the Template

These changes were all made in a few minutes right inside PowerPoint.  You can access all the elements, modify the design layouts, and change background by viewing the Slide Master.  This is located under the View tab on the PowerPoint ribbon (the tool bar at the top of PowerPoint).

I hope this sparks some ideas as to the versatility of our templates.

Good Presenting!

Art Holden
Co-Owner, PresenterMedia.com

We’ve been getting some questions about how to add your logo to our PowerPoint templates.  Each of our templates has a placeholder for a logo or your company name.  In most cases this is an image placed in the slide master layout.   I thought I would describe how to remove or change the logo placeholder in this post.

Template: Music Sheet PowerPoint Template

For the purpose of this tutorial I will be using PowerPoint 2007.

Step 1

After you have opened up the template in PowerPoint, you will need to locate, under the “View” tab, the “Slide Master” button.

Slide Master View

Step 2

Simply highlight the logo placeholder and maker your changes.  You can now delete or change the logo to your own.

The Slide Master is pretty much the brain of the PowerPoint template.  All the pre-designed layouts can be found here and edited.  Changes you make in the slide master will affect all the pages in your presentation.  For example if you select the logo placeholder and delete it from the ppt,   it will delete the logo from all the pages in your presentation.  If you replace the placeholder with your own text or logo image, consequently, it will place your logo on all the pages in the presentation.

Note: You will probably need to check through all the layouts available in the Slide Master view since we typically include more than one option for the logo placeholder.

The Slide Master is a best friend for building pages fast, I will talk more about using PowerPoint’s Slide Master in future posts.