12. Create custom presentation elements
Practice files
For this chapter, use the practice files from the PowerPoint2016SBSCh12 folder. For practice file download instructions, see the introduction.
In addition to using the built-in design elements of PowerPoint 2016, you can create your own designs, themes, theme color and font sets, layouts, and templates. This makes it easy to create consistent presentations that reflect the branding elements—such as colors, fonts, and visual imagery—associated with your organization.
Creating a fully custom PowerPoint presentation template involves two processes. The layout of content on slides is controlled by slide layouts, and the colors, fonts, and visual effect styles of the presentation are controlled by the theme. The slide layouts and theme are both part of the slide master. To create a custom template, you create a theme, modify the slide master and its slide layouts, and then save the modified package as a template. You can reuse the custom theme in Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft Excel workbooks, and incorporate it into custom templates for those apps.
This chapter guides you through procedures related to creating custom themes, customizing slide masters and layouts, and saving custom presentation templates.
Create custom themes
As you learned in Chapter 3, “Create and manage slides,” a simple, yet elegant, way to dress up a presentation is to apply a theme that makes the colors, fonts, formatting, graphic effects, and other elements consistent across the entire presentation. Understanding theme colors and theme fonts can help you create professional-looking presentations that use an appealing balance of color and text. Every theme includes a color set, a font set, and an effect set.
The color set includes 12 complementary colors that are designed to be used for the following elements of a slide:
Text/background These four colors are for dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background.
Accent 1 through Accent 6 These six colors are for objects other than text.
Hyperlink This color is to draw attention to hyperlinks.
Followed Hyperlink This color is to indicate visited hyperlinks.
The Theme Colors menu displays 8 of the 12 theme colors, and the Theme Colors gallery displays a palette of 6 light to dark variations of 10 of the theme colors. (The two hyperlink colors do not appear in this palette.) If you like all the elements of a theme except its color scheme, you can choose a different predefined set of theme colors without otherwise affecting the overall look of the theme.
Custom color sets appear in their own section at the top of the Themes menu
If none of the sets of theme colors is exactly what you’re looking for, you can create your own.
The order in which you select theme colors specifies the elements that they affect
SEE ALSO
For information about using non-theme colors, see the sidebar “Non-theme colors” in Chapter 3, “Create and manage slides.”
The color set of the theme is available from all the color galleries in the presentation. Changing the color set automatically updates all presentation elements that are formatted with theme colors. Any elements that have colors from outside of the Theme Colors palette do not change.
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When you change the color set, the colors in the Theme Colors palette are replaced with the colors that are in the same column of the new color set.
In addition to changing the theme colors, you can change the theme fonts. The Fonts gallery—which you can display from either the Variants group on the Design tab in Normal view or the Background group on the Slide Master tab in Slide Master view—shows a list of all the predefined combinations. In each combination, the first font (called the heading font) is used for slide titles, and the second font (called the body font) is used for other slide text.
Font sets can use the same or different heading and body fonts
If the specific pairing of fonts that you want to use isn’t available in the Office fonts list, or if your organization uses a font that doesn’t come with Office, you can create a custom font set.
You can use any font that is installed on your computer and available within Office apps
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When you create a new theme color set or font set, you do so by modifying an existing set. If an existing color set contains colors that you want to use in your custom color set, you can save time by choosing that color set as a starting point.
Each theme also has a set of theme effects. You can’t create your own effect set, but you can choose a different set from the Effects gallery.
After you choose or create the color set, font set, and effect set, you save them as a custom theme. If you intend to use the custom theme in most or all of the presentations you create, you can set it as the default theme.
You can create custom color sets, font sets, and themes from the Design tab in any of the presentation development views, or from any of the Master views. Regardless of where you create these elements, they’re available from within all the Office apps.
To create a custom theme color set
1. Do the following to open the Create New Theme Colors dialog box:
a. Display the presentation in any development view.
b. On the Design tab, in the Variants group, click the More button to expand the Variants gallery and menu.
c. On the Variants menu, click Colors, and then click Customize Colors.
Or
a. Display the presentation in any Master view.
b. On the Slide Master tab, the Handout Master tab, or the Notes Master tab, in the Background group, click the Colors button, and then click Customize Colors.
2. For each color in the Theme colors section, click the current color swatch, and then do either of the following:
• In the Theme Colors or Standard Colors palette, click the color swatch you want to assign to that element.
• Click More Colors to open the Colors dialog box.
Choose a standard color or define one by using RGB values
Click a color swatch on the Standard tab, or define the RGB or HSL values of the color you want to use on the Custom tab. Then click OK.
SEE ALSO
For more information about working with themes and colors, see ”Apply themes” in Chapter 3, “Create and manage slides.”
3. In the Name box at the bottom of the Create New Theme Colors dialog box, enter a name for the new theme color set.
4. Click Save to create the color set and apply it to the current presentation.
To edit a custom color set
1. On the Colors menu, in the Custom section, right-click the color set, and then click Edit.
To delete a custom color set
1. On the Colors menu, in the Custom section, right-click the color set, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the deletion.
To create a custom theme font set
1. Do the following to open the Create New Theme Fonts dialog box:
a. Display the presentation in any development view.
b. On the Design tab, in the Variants group, click the More button to expand the Variants gallery and menu.
c. On the Variants menu, click Fonts, and then click Customize Fonts.
Or
a. Display the presentation in any Master view.
b. On the Slide Master tab, the Handout Master tab, or the Notes Master tab, in the Background group, click the Fonts button, and then click Customize Fonts.
2. In the Heading font list, click the font you want to use for slide titles and subtitles, and for document headings when the font set is applied in a Word document.
3. In the Body font list, click the font you want to use for slide text content (such as lists) and for normal paragraphs, lists, tables, and other document content when the font set is applied in Word.
4. In the Name box, enter a name for the new theme font set.
5. Click Save to create the font set and apply it to the current presentation.
To edit a custom font set
1. On the Font menu, in the Custom section, right-click the font set, and then click Edit.
To delete a custom font set
1. On the Font menu, in the Custom section, right-click the font set, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the deletion.
To select a theme effect set
1. Do the following to display the Effects gallery:
a. Display the presentation in any development view.
b. On the Design tab, in the Variants group, click the More button to expand the Variants gallery and menu.
c. On the Variants menu, click Effects.
Or
a. Display the presentation in any Master view.
b. On the Slide Master tab, the Handout Master tab, or the Notes Master tab, in the Background group, click the Effects button.
2. In the Effects gallery, click the effect set that you want to use with the theme.
To save the current theme elements as a custom theme
1. Do the following to open the Save Current Theme dialog box:
a. Display the presentation in any development view.
b. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button to display the Themes gallery and menu.
c. On the Themes menu, click Save Current Theme.
Or
a. Display the presentation in any Master view.
b. On the Slide Master tab, the Handout Master tab, or the Notes Master tab, in the Edit Theme group, click the Themes button, and then click Save Current Theme.
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The dialog box displays the contents of the Document Themes folder, which is located at C:Users<user name>AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplatesDocument Themes. Custom theme colors and theme fonts are saved in subfolders of this folder so that they are available in their galleries for use in other presentations, documents, and workbooks.
2. In the File name box, enter a name for the custom theme, and then click Save.
1. In the Themes gallery, in the Custom section, right-click the theme thumbnail, click Delete, and then click Yes to confirm the deletion.
To set a custom theme as the default theme
1. On the Design tab, in the Themes group, click the More button to display the Themes gallery and menu.
2. In the Custom section of the gallery, right-click the theme, and then click Set as Default Theme.
Customize slide masters and layouts
When you create a presentation, the slides take on the characteristics of the template on which the presentation is based. PowerPoint templates use masters to determine their basic design. By default, each PowerPoint presentation has three masters:
Slide master This set of masters controls the look of all the slides in a presentation, including the theme, text placement, background graphics, and other slide elements. The set contains a master design for most of the layouts you are likely to need when using that particular template.
Handout master This master controls the look of any handouts you prepare for distribution to your audience.
Notes master This master controls the look of slide notes in Notes Page view and if you choose to print them.
SEE ALSO
For information about handouts and slide notes, see “Add notes to slides” and “Print presentations and handouts” in Chapter 9, “Review presentations.”
This topic provides information specifically about slide masters, but you can use the procedures described in this topic to work with handout masters and notes masters.
Each slide master has one master layout that is the basis for one or more slide layouts. (For example, most slide masters include slide layouts for presentation title slides, section headers, and content slides that usually include a title and one or more content placeholders.) A PowerPoint presentation can have multiple slide masters if they’re necessary to define multiple base slides.
The master layout defines the theme and default slide background, and can define locations and formatting of placeholders for the title, text, date, slide number, and footer that can be part of each slide layout. The slide layouts define the location and formatting of the slide content, and the types of content placeholders on the slide.
Each slide master includes one master slide and multiple slide layouts
The master layout and slide layouts are visible in Slide Master view, where you can edit them. Thumbnails of the slide layouts are visible in Normal view and Slide Sorter view, where you can apply them. In the presentation development views, the slide layouts are available on the Home tab from the New Slide menu (to create a slide that has a specific layout) and from the Layout menu (to change the layout of an existing slide).
SEE ALSO
For information about creating slides from slide layouts, applying slide layouts, and resetting slides to slide layouts, see “Add and remove slides” in Chapter 3, “Create and manage slides.”
When you modify the slide master, you can make changes to the master layout or to the individual slide layouts. The best place to make a change depends on the type of change and whether you want it to affect all slides or only some slides. Here are some guidelines:
On the master layout, you can specify which base slide elements the master layout controls, modify the placeholders for those elements, format the placeholder content, format the background of all slides, and add fixed text and images that appear on all slides. Any change that you make to the master layout affects those elements on the associated slide layouts, unless you customize the elements for the specific slide layout.
On the individual slide layouts, you can add, modify, and hide placeholders; format placeholder content; format the individual slide background; and add fixed text or images that will appear only on slides based on that layout.
When editing a slide master in Slide Master view, you work with the commands on the Slide Master tab to create, delete, and rename slide layouts; insert placeholders; hide or display base elements; and manage theme elements and slide backgrounds. You can also set the slide size from this tab, as you can from the Design tab in the development views.
The items available in the Master Layout group depend on whether a master layout or slide layout is selected
A subset of the commands that you use in the development views are available on the other ribbon tabs in Slide Master view. You can use these commands to insert and format placeholder text, images, transitions, and animations. You can also use the commands on the Review tab to review any boilerplate text that you’re including on the slide masters rather than on the slides. The Design and Slide Show tabs are hidden in Slide Master view.
You can easily develop high-quality presentations without ever venturing into Slide Master view, but for maximum efficiency, any change that you want to make consistently throughout a presentation should be made on the slide master.
Here are some of the tasks that you might want to accomplish that are most efficient to perform on the slide master rather than on individual slides:
Move or resize a content placeholder
Change the default size, font, or position of text in a placeholder
Add an element, such as a logo, to every slide or to every slide of a specific slide layout
Create a custom slide layout that arranges or formats content differently than the existing slide layouts
Changes to the slide master do not affect the master layout or slide layouts in the original design template that is available from the New page of the Backstage view or the Themes gallery on the Design tab.
To switch to Slide Master view
1. On the View tab, in the Master Views group, click Slide Master.
To specify the slide elements that are controlled by the slide master
1. In Slide Master view, select the master slide (not a slide layout).
2. On the Slide Master tab, in the Master Layout group, click the Master Layout button.
The slide master can control these elements for the associated layouts
3. In the Master Layout dialog box, select the check boxes of the elements you want the slide master to control. Then click OK.
To apply a different theme to a slide master
1. On the Slide Master tab, in the Edit Theme group, click Themes, and then click the theme you want to apply.
To change theme elements of a slide master
1. On the Slide Master tab, in the Background group, do any of the following:
• In the Colors list, click the color set you want to use.
• In the Fonts list, click the font set you want to use.
• In the Effects gallery, click the effect style you want to use.
To change the background of one or more slide layouts
1. Do either of the following:
• To change the background of one slide layout, display that slide layout.
• To change the background of all slide layouts, select the master slide.
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You can make changes to one slide layout and then apply the change to all of them afterward, from the Format Background pane.
2. On the Slide Master tab, in the Background group, click the Background Styles button, and then do either of the following:
• Click one of the 12 preconfigured background styles.
The preconfigured background styles are based on the four Text/Background theme colors
• Click Format Background to open the Format Background pane, in which you can select the fill style and specify the fill color, picture, texture, or pattern.
SEE ALSO
For information about working in the Format Background pane, see “Change slide backgrounds” in Chapter 3, “Create and manage slides.”
3. If you modify the background of one slide and then want to apply your changes to the others, open the Format Background pane, and then click Apply to All.
To remove the slide master background from a slide layout
1. Display the slide layout.
2. In the Background group, select the Hide Background Graphics check box.
To add a placeholder to a slide layout
1. Display the slide layout you want to modify.
2. On the Slide Master tab, in the Master Layout group, do either of the following:
• If you want to insert a content placeholder that defines multilevel list formatting and includes buttons for inserting text, tables, charts, SmartArt graphics, pictures, and media clips, click the Insert Placeholder button, or click the Insert Placeholder arrow, and then click Content.
• If you want to insert a placeholder that supports a specific type of content, click the Insert Placeholder arrow, and then click the content type.
Use content-specific placeholders to guide the creation of slide content
3. Point to the slide where you want the upper-left corner of the placeholder. The cursor shape is a plus sign.
4. Do either of the following:
• Click the slide to insert a one-inch square placeholder.
• Drag down and to the right to draw a placeholder.
When you release the mouse button, the placeholder is selected for editing and the Format tool tab is active.
To format a placeholder
1. Select the placeholder, and then do any of the following:
• To move the placeholder, drag it or press the arrow keys.
• To resize the placeholder, drag the placeholder sizing handles, or set the Height and Width in the Size group.
• To rotate the placeholder, drag the placeholder rotation handle, or click the Rotate command in the Arrange group on the Format tool tab, and then click a specific rotation.
• To format the placeholder outline, fill, or visual effects, use the commands in the Shape Styles group.
To format the text in a placeholder
1. Do either of the following:
• To modify all the text in the placeholder, point to the placeholder border and then click to select it.
• To modify specific text within a placeholder, select that text.
2. Apply character and paragraph formatting from the Mini Toolbar, by using commands on the Home tab, or by using keyboard shortcuts.
To create a slide layout
1. Do either of the following:
• To create a copy of an existing layout, in the Thumbnails pane, right-click a slide layout that you want to copy, and then click Duplicate Layout.
The duplicate layout has the same name as the original layout, but is preceded by 1_ (or a higher number if the copied layout name started with a number).
• To create a generic layout, select the slide layout after which you want to insert the new slide layout. Then on the Slide Master tab, in the Edit Master group, click the Insert Layout button to insert a generic slide.
The new layout has the name Custom Layout Layout (or if that name already exists, the new layout name is preceded by a number and underscore).
To display the name and usage of a slide layout
1. In the Thumbnails pane, point to a slide layout to display a ScreenTip that contains the slide layout name and the slide numbers that use the slide layout.
Quickly display the layout name and slides that use it
To rename a slide layout
1. Select the slide layout.
2. On the Slide Master tab, in the Edit Master group, click the Rename button to open the Rename Layout dialog box.
3. In the Layout name box, enter a new name for the layout, and then click Rename.
To manage the display of the title and footer on a slide layout
1. On the Slide Master tab, in the Master Layout group, select or clear the Title and Footers check boxes to specify whether to include these elements on the slide layout.
To manage slide master footer content
1. On the Insert tab, in the Text group, click the Header & Footer button.
2. On the Slide tab of the Header and Footer dialog box, do any of the following:
• Select the Date and time check box. Then click Update automatically, and click the format you want to display the date and time in, or click Fixed, and then enter the date and time as you want to display them.
• Select the Slide number check box.
• Select the Footer check box, and then in the text box, enter the text you want to display at the bottom of the page.
3. Do any of the following to change the default scope of the footer:
• To include the footer elements on the Title Slide layout, clear the Don’t show on title slide check box.
• To display the specific footer selections only on the current slide, click Apply.
• To display the specific footer selections on all slides, click Apply to All.
IMPORTANT
Regardless of your selection, the footer content is shown only on slide layouts that have the Footers check box in the Master Layout group selected.
To delete one or more slide layouts from a slide master
1. In the Thumbnails pane, select the slide layout or layouts you want to remove. Then do any of the following:
• On the Slide Master tab, in the Edit Master group, click the Delete button.
• Right-click the selection, and then click Delete Layout.
• Press the Delete key.
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Only slide layouts that are not currently in use can be deleted. Pointing to a slide layout displays, in a ScreenTip, a list of slides to which the layout is applied.
To close Slide Master view and return to the presentation
1. Do either of the following:
• On the Slide Master tab, in the Close group, click the Close Master View button.
• On the View Shortcuts toolbar at the right end of the status bar, click any view button.
Save custom presentation templates
You can save any presentation as a custom template, which will be available to you on the New page of the Backstage view. Depending on the version of PowerPoint 2016 you’re running, you must click the Custom or Personal heading to display the custom templates. The additional heading is available only after you have saved a presentation template to the default personal templates location.
Access your custom templates by clicking the Custom or Personal link
By default, PowerPoint saves custom templates to the Custom Office Templates subfolder of the Documents folder associated with your user account. If you want to change the default location (for example, if you want to save them in the Public folder structure or a shared folder so they’re available to multiple users or from multiple computers), you can do so. (You can always save the custom templates elsewhere, but for them to appear in the Custom view of the New page, you must change the default personal templates location.)
To save a presentation as a template
1. Remove any content that you don’t want to save with the template.
2. On the Save As page of the Backstage view, click Browse to open the Save As dialog box. (You don’t have to select a location.)
3. In the Save as type list, click PowerPoint Template (*.potx) to change the location to the default personal template location.
4. In the File name box, enter a name for the custom template. Then click Save.
To create a presentation based on a custom template
1. Display the New page of the Backstage view.
2. Click the Custom or Personal link near the top of the page, and then do either of the following:
• Click the thumbnail of the template you want to use, and then click Create in the dialog box that opens.
• Double-click the thumbnail of the template you want to use.
To set the default personal templates location
1. In the Backstage view, click Options to open the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
2. In the left pane of the PowerPoint Options dialog box, click the Save page tab.
3. In the Save presentations section of the page, in the Default Personal Templates Location box, enter the folder you want to use. Then click OK.
Skills review
In this chapter, you learned how to:
Customize slide masters and layouts
Save custom presentation templates
Practice tasks
The practice files for these tasks are located in the PowerPoint2016SBSCh12 folder. You can save the results of the tasks in the same folder.
Create custom themes
Open the CreateThemes presentation, and then perform the following tasks:
1. Switch to Slide Master view, and then display the master layout.
2. From the Background group on the Slide Master tab, apply a color set of your choice.
3. Create a custom color set based on the color set you chose. Change at least one of the colors, and notice that the preview image reflects the change. Save the custom color set as MyColors.
4. Apply the Candara font set.
5. Create a custom font set that uses Franklin Gothic Medium as the heading font and Candara as the body font. Save the custom color set as MyFonts.
6. Apply the Glossy effect style.
7. Save the new color, font, and effect combination as a custom theme named MySlideTheme.
8. Save and close the presentation.
Customize slide masters and layouts
Open the CustomizeMasters presentation, and then perform the following tasks:
1. Display slide 2, and then switch to Slide Master view.
2. Change the default slide size to Widescreen.
3. Configure the slide background to display the Background picture from the practice file folder. Set the transparency of the picture to 70%.
4. Apply the background picture to all slide layouts in the slide master.
5. Remove the date from the master layout.
6. Increase the font size of the placeholder title text to the next largest font size.
7. Remove the background from the title slide. Then remove the Footer and page number from the title slide, leaving only the date in the footer area.
8. Insert a new slide layout that has two small picture placeholders on the left side of the slide, and a text placeholder on the right side of the slide.
9. Rename the new slide layout Two Pictures and Text.
Save custom presentation templates
Open the SaveTemplates presentation, and then perform the following tasks:
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This task assumes that you haven’t previously designated a default personal templates folder. If you have already done so, you can do steps 1-3 and 7-9.
1. Remove existing text and other content from the slides.
2. Save the presentation as a template named MySlideTemplate in the default folder (Custom Office Templates).
3. Close the file.
4. Create a new presentation based on the template.
5. Close the new presentation without saving it.
6. Delete the template from your Custom Office Templates folder if you want to.