Explore Slide Layouts within Slide Master view in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
OS: Microsoft Windows XP and higher
We already explored how you can change between different Slide Layouts in our Change Slide Layout in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial. When you access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout button, you see the Layout drop-down gallery shown in Figure 1 below. The number of Slide Layouts that you see in this gallery may differ from Theme to Theme. However, with PowerPoint's default Office Theme applied, you will see 9 layouts as shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Layout drop-down gallery
Tip: You can see the name of the active Theme within the Status Bar as highlighted in red within Figure 2, 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 2: Theme name displayed within Status Bar
So, where do these Slide Layouts come from? What influences how they look, or how the placeholders within them are laid out? To find out answers to these questions, you need to access the Slide Master View in PowerPoint. In Slide Master view, you'll find that the left pane contains two distinctly different elements: a larger thumbnail representing the Slide Master (highlighted in red within Figure 3) and several smaller slide thumbnails below representing individual Slide Layouts (highlighted in blue within Figure 3).
Figure 3: Slide Master View within PowerPoint
In any typical PowerPoint presentation, the Slide Master (highlighted in red within Figure 3 above) is hierarchically placed at the highest position for information about the background, color, fonts, effects, placeholders (size and position), etc. The Slide Layouts which are placed at a lower hierarchy level get all this information from the Slide Master they belong to.
When you modify the Slide Master, you are making changes to all the influenced Slide Layouts beneath that Slide Master. For example, if you change the Background Style in a Slide Master, this should reflect the new Background Style in all the dependent Slide Layouts. However, the reverse is not true. If you make any changes to the Slide Layout, that change is never reflected in the Slide Master. In fact, for that change in particular, the Slide Layout stops being influenced by the Slide Master. Exploring our earlier example of changing the Background Style, any change made to the Background Styles in a Slide Layout will not affect the Slide Master or any other Slide Layouts within the presentation.
We already counted that the Layout drop-down gallery shown in Figure 1 had 9 Slide Layouts. Correspondingly there are 11 Slide Layouts available within the Slide Master. These layouts are:
The last two Slide Layouts do not show up within the Layout drop-down gallery since they are intended for Far East Asian languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. Thus, you only see 9 Slide Layouts within the Layout drop-down gallery if you are using an English version of PowerPoint.
We will explore how you can add new Slide Layouts and modify existing ones in other tutorials.
See Also:
Slide Master and Slide Layouts: Slide Layouts Within Slide Master View (Index Page)
Slide Layouts Within Slide Master View in PowerPoint 2016 for WindowsYou May Also Like: Differences in PowerPoint Usage in Microsoft Teams and Zoom: Conversation with Dave Paradi | Walnuts PowerPoint Templates
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