The Slide Master is something that influences
the layout and look of all slides in your presentation. The simplest change you can make to your Slide Master is changing the
Background Style used so that all slide layouts and actual slides in your presentation use a new slide background. In this
tutorial, we will explore how you can change between any of
the 12 available Background
Styles to apply to the Slide Master.
Note: You can also have more than one Slide Master in your presentation, and any of those multiple Slide Masters
can influence the actual slides in your presentation.
Follow these steps to learn more:
- Launch PowerPoint 2010. PowerPoint typically opens a blank
presentation with the Office Theme applied. You can see the name of the active Theme within
the Status Bar as highlighted
in red within Figure 1, below. If you see another Theme name here, make sure you apply
the Office Theme since this is a basic, clean Theme that lends itself best to changes and edits that we discuss
later in this tutorial. If you do not know how you can apply a Theme, explore
our Applying Themes in PowerPoint, Word, and Excel
2010 tutorial.
-
Figure 1: Slide Master button within Master Views group of View tab of the Ribbon
- Next, access the View tab of
the Ribbon, and within the Master Views
group, click the Slide Master button, as shown highlighted in blue
within Figure 1, above.
- This opens the Slide Master view, as
shown in Figure 2. Here, within the pane on the left, you'll find one large slide thumbnail that represents the
Slide Master (highlighted in red within Figure 2), and the several smaller slide
thumbnails below represent individual Slide
Layouts. For now, do understand that changes made to the Slide Master influence all the Slide Layouts, and in turn, that
influences all slides within your presentation.
-
Figure 2: Slide Master view
Note: In hierarchy terms, Slide Layouts are dependent for their appearance on the Slide Master although you can
individually override these dependencies.
- Now, make sure you select the Slide Master (highlighted in red
within Figure 2) and click the Background Styles button (highlighted
in blue within Figure 2).
- This brings up the Background Styles drop-down gallery with 12 default slide background
styles (highlighted in red within Figure 3). One of these 12 styles may be
highlighted. This indicates the current background style of the Slide Master. Hover the mouse cursor on any other style to see
its Live Preview. Thereafter click on the style of your
choice to apply it to the Slide Master.
-
Figure 3: Background Styles drop-down gallery
Note: These 12 default styles change when you apply a
different
Theme to your presentation. Also, do you see
the
Format Background (highlighted in
blue within
Figure 3) and
Reset Slide Background options below the Background Style thumbnails? The former option is explained in
our
Custom Backgrounds in the Slide Master in
PowerPoint 2010 tutorial. The latter option is meant for individual Slide Layouts and is always grayed out when you select the
Slide Master.
- This will apply the selected background style to the Slide Master and all the Slide Layouts belonging to that Slide
Master as well, as shown in Figure 4 (compare with Figure 2, shown earlier on this page).
-
Figure 4: Background Style changed within Slide Master view
- Click the Close Master View button on the Slide Master tab of
the Ribbon (highlighted in red within Figure 4 above). This will get
you back to Normal View, where you can see the new
Background Style applied to all your slides.
- Save your presentation often.