Choose A Layout

Slide layouts consist of placeholders (unless you choose the Blank layout) you fill with your own content. When you insert a new slide and view it in Normal view, you’ll see labels telling you how to use each placeholder, such as Click To Add Text or Click Icon To Add Picture. For text boxes, click anywhere inside them and start typing. The quickest way to add a new slide is clicking the—you guessed it—New Slide button on the Home tab. When you click here, PowerPoint inserts a new slide using the same layout as the last slide you selected. You can build the new slide on a different layout, however, by clicking the arrow under New Slide and clicking one of the other styles in the gallery that appears.

When you create a new presentation built on one of PowerPoint’s templates (click the Office button, New, and Installed Templates or My Templates), PowerPoint inserts several slide layouts tailored to that type of presentation. You’ll find that many of these are highly formatted and include sophisticated elements such as charts and SmartArt graphics.

Modify Layouts

On many layouts, including the often-used Title And Content layout, you’ll see several icons sitting in some of the placeholders. These are all direct links to the tools that let you add elements such as charts, pictures, SmartArt graphics, and multimedia clips. On the Title And Content layout, for example, these links sit within the bullet list placeholder. If you click one of these icons, PowerPoint assumes you’re choosing that kind of content over the text and removes the text placeholder. The same thing happens if you start typing text into the placeholder; PowerPoint removes the links from view.

The slide’s overall structure is just as flexible as the elements within placeholders. If you’d like a Title box to appear elsewhere on the slide, click it and drag it to the right spot. Picture placeholders are yours to adjust, too, by moving them around or dragging a corner handle to resize them. If your adjustments ever seem to get a little out of control, click the Reset button in the Slides section of the Home tab to revert a slide to its original layout.

Create Custom Layouts

If you like a slide’s look enough to use it elsewhere, you can duplicate it in multiple spots, then modify the text or photos to suit its new locations. Just right-click a slide on the left side in Normal view and choose Duplicate Slide. A duplicate appears below the selected slide. To copy a slide into a more distant location, right-click it and choose Copy. Then right-click where you want the new slide and choose Paste.

You’ll find an even more powerful use for your own look when you create custom layouts, which make it easy to add your preformatted slides over and over again in future presentations. You also can share them with other users so that everyone on your business team, for example, builds slides with the same look. Designing layouts actually means creating a new overall template for the layouts to live in. In an existing slide show, click Slide Master on the View tab. Inside the master, you’ll be looking at all the slide layouts available in this particular presentation template. You can add a new layout to this template by clicking the Slide Master tab’s Insert Layout button. On the new slide that appears, you can adjust the size of the existing placeholders or delete them altogether. You can add new placeholders for pictures, charts, and more by clicking the Slide Master tab’s Insert Placeholder button (in the Master Layout section).

When all your new layouts are complete, click the Office button, choose Save As, and choose PowerPoint Template in the Save As Type drop-down list. From now on, anytime you’re working in a presentation created from this template, your new layout will appear among the options under the New Slide button.