Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances

Chapter 3. Formatting and Editing

Those of us who create presentations for a living have our own pet peeves about PowerPoint’s editing and formatting tools. We also know how important it is to start a presentation right, using well-developed templates, masters, and default settings to speed production along.

This chapter begins by showing you how to overcome issues with design templates and slide masters to help you lay a good foundation for your presentations. It also explains how to create your own templates, work with multiple masters and slide layouts, take advantage of various tools to align objects, and tackle formatting issues such as changing case and setting hanging indents.

TEMPLATES AND MASTERS

Locate Your Templates

THE ANNOYANCE: I made a design template, but it doesn’t show up in the template list when I select File → New. Why can’t PowerPoint find my templates?

THE FIX: To see where PowerPoint stores these templates, select File → Save As and choose Design Template (*.pot) from the “Save as type” drop-down menu. Next, click the “Save in” pull-down arrow to see the full path to where the templates live (see Figure 3-1). Save or copy your .pot file to that folder.

Figure 3-1. To see where PowerPoint stores your templates, choose Design Template (*.pot) from the “Save as type” drop-down menu, and then check the path to the folder in the “Save in” menu.

When you install PowerPoint ...