Microsoft® PowerPoint 2007: create a new slide master

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 gives you the option of creating your own master slides, which allow you to add or change design elements and formatting within presentations. A slide master is a single, controlling slide behind the scenes that specifies how slides appear all the way through your presentation. When you make changes to a slide master, they're applied universally to the presentation. A slide master is part of a template -- it stores information by using placeholders. We'll also demonstrate how to add a new placeholder to a master slide. You can use multiple slide masters within a presentation or simply use a single slide master that contains multiple layouts.

Let's get started by viewing the Slide Master. First click the View tab on the Ribbon. It's at the far right.

In the Presentation Views group, click Slide Master. Opening this allows you to change the design and layout of the master slides.

A new slide master appears. Notice that the labels include Master so that you know you're working on the slide master. The left pane, called the thumbnail pane, shows all the layouts within the default slide master provided by PowerPoint 2007.

Now that you know how to access the slide masters, let's learn how to insert a new placeholder. If you wanted to add a new placeholder for a chart, you would start by clicking the Slide Master tab at the top left.

Then click Insert Placeholder.

A menu appears with various options, including Content, Text, Picture, and Chart. For this demo, we'll select the Chart menu item.

Then drag the cursor to the location on the slide you want the chart object to appear. You can also shift-click on the slide to insert the placeholder.

Once the position is correct, you can resize the placeholder. Place your cursor at the corner or on the edge and drag to enlarge to the desired size.

You can make other adjustments or insert additional placeholders to the slide master as needed. Now that you've reviewed this demonstration, you have the skills to fully customize the slide masters and create an eye-catching presentation.