Change Slide's Layout|set slide number & date in Poerpoint

Changing a Slide's Layout in PowerPoint

PowerPoint has an the AutoLayout feature. This feature helps you to design slides around the information you need to present.

When you create a new slide, you can select from approximately 24 AutoLayouts (depending on the version of PowerPoint). Each offers a different layout, depending on what you want to do. For example, there's a layout that has placeholders for a title, text, and a chart. The title and text placeholders follow the formatting of the slide master for your presentation. You can move, resize, or reformat the placeholders so they vary from the slide master.

Change a slide layout

1. In Slide or Slide Sorter view, select the slide you need to change the layout.
2. From the Format menu, choose SLIDE LAYOUT. Note: The Task Pane appears on the right-hand side of your screen.
3. Use the scroll bar to view all layouts, click the one you want, and then click APPLY.
4. Rearrange any overlapping or hidden objects to fit the new layout.

how to set a default template in powerpoint 2013

Microsoft PowerPoint remains one of those pieces of software that appears to be a mystery to many people, although it is arguably one of the most useful, especially for anyone in business. As a virtual assistant, you are no doubt going to be tasked with creating or refining a PowerPoint presentation at one time or another, and will no doubt be expected to be an expert in it too!

The background of a slide is simple to change, and yet we see so many white slides in presentations! Here’s how to add a splash of colour to your slides in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.

On the ‘design‘ tab under the ‘background‘ group click the button in the corner of the group box to open the ‘format background‘ box. You’ll then see a number of options available to you with regards to formatting the background colour and style of your slides. These formats can be applied to a single slide or to a whole presentation.

When the dialog box opens, the fill tab is presented by default. Here you can see that you can fill the slide with a colour in various ways, either as a solid fill, gradient fill, texture, pattern or even a picture.

Let’s start by looking at an ordinary solid fill

• First make sure that you click the solid fill radio button
• Next, click on the colour drop down button to reveal the colours to choose from
• If you want to set you own custom colour you can select ‘More Colours’
• After you have made your colour choice, you will see the slide behind the dialog box change colour. You can also use the transparency slider bar here to modify the transparency of your background colour.
• Click ‘close‘ to apply to just the single slide or ‘apply to all‘ to apply this background to your whole presentation.

How about a gradient fill?

How about using the pre-set gradient to create a pretty colour effect on your background? Follow the same steps as above, but this time select the‘gradient fill‘ radio button. You then see the gradient page with several options for you to choose from. Here you can select a pre-set gradient and then modify it using the various slider options.

You are able to adjust the type of gradient (linear, radial, rectangular etc.) and also the direction of the gradient using the options in the relevant drop down boxes.

Quick tip: if you are modifying a pre-set gradient, you will see the ‘gradient stops’ bar with a number of tabs on it, click each of the tabs before adjusting the colours, brightness and transparency to adjust each section of the gradient individually.

Using clip art or photographs

You can also use images in your Microsoft PowerPoint backgrounds, however, these can often cause issues. Not least because a photograph can often make the slide appear too ‘busy ‘but also because there are many issues with the images becoming distorted when you apply them to a slide.

The best way to see if your image or photograph will work is to test it out first, try stretching it or tiling it by clicking the check box ’tile picture as texture‘. Another option is to offset your image from the edges of the slides so that it appears centres without being stretched.

How to do this:

• Select the picture or texture fill radio button
• Select insert from ‘file’ and browse to the location of your image
• Select the image and click ok. You will see your image appear on the slide behind the dialog box
• Then using the ‘offsets’ text boxes, enter the percentage amount that you want to offset your picture from the edge of the slide. If you enter the same amount for all four sides of the slide, this will ensure that your image remains centred and in proportion.
• Finally, you can use the transparency slider to blend your image into the background of your slide

PowerPoint 2013: Date, Slide Number and Footer

Having visited the slide master in Slide Master view a few times you may be wondering about those “empty” placeholders on all the slides.  There are at least five placeholders on most layout masters, inherited from the slide master: Title, Content, Date, Slide Number, and Footer.  But when you look at the slide in Normal view you see only two of those areas: Title and Content (unless you have chosen the blank slide layout, in which case you see nothing).  Some layouts have many more placeholders, of course, but the date/time, slide number, and footer placeholders do not actually show up in Normal view.  How do you get these elements to show up on your slides?

Open your presentation and click on the Insert tab, and then click on Header & Footer in the text group.

You can do this from good old Normal view.  Note that the check boxes on this dialog box are clear.  Place a check in each box for the element you want to appear on your slides:  Date and time, Slide number, and Footer.  Note also that you can elect for these elements to NOT appear on the title slide.  Then click Apply, to apply these settings to the currently selected slide(s)—use Slide Sorter view to select a group—or Apply to All to place these elements on each slide in your presentation.

The drop-down next to date allows for many different date/time formats.  Selecting “Update automatically” updates the date/time field each time you open the presentation.  Choosing “Fixed,” on the other hand, will always display a fixed date.  You can type the fixed date and add time (or anything else you want) in the dialog box.  You can also type any footer you wish.

If you want to start numbering at a number other than 1, after applying your settings, go to View > Slide Master, click the drop-down under Slide Size, and select Custom Slide Size  (I know, this is a weird place to put it).  Change the number in “Number slides from:” to be whatever you want (and no, negative numbers are not accepted).  This is sometimes useful when combining multiple presentations into a single, long presentation).

Granted, these elements are in an unusual location on the slides in our presentation, but that is because these elements are located where they are as part of the Ion theme layouts.  They are in somewhat different locations in each theme, and changing themes will change the location of these elements.  The “Retrospect” theme will place them in the more traditional location along the bottom of the slide.