📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓

If you have ever changed a font on 40 slides by hand, you need the Slide Master. It is the template behind every slide: change it once and every slide follows.

Open it

View → Slide Master. On the left you see one big master slide at the top and several layouts under it (Title Slide, Title and Content, Two Content…).

• Changes to the top master affect every layout: fonts, colours, background, logo, footer.
• Changes to a layout affect only slides that use that layout.

Five things to set on the master

1. Theme fonts: Slide Master → Fonts → Customize Fonts. Pick one heading and one body font — now the whole deck is consistent.
2. Theme colours: Colors → Customize Colors with your brand colours. Charts and SmartArt use them automatically.
3. Logo: insert it once on the master; it appears on every slide and cannot be moved by accident on normal slides.
4. Footer: Insert → Header & Footer → slide number, date, confidentiality text.
5. Title position: align titles once so they do not “jump” between slides.

Rescue a messy deck

1. Select all slides in Normal view (Ctrl+A in the thumbnail pane).
2. Home → Reset. Every placeholder snaps back to the layout’s position and formatting (your text is kept).
3. Use Home → Layout to give slides the correct layout.

Save it as a template

File → Save As → PowerPoint Template (.potx). Put it in your Custom Office Templates folder and it appears under File → New → Personal for everyone who uses the folder.

Try it yourself: step by step

1. Download messy-deck.pptx — four slides, four different title fonts and sizes.
2. View → Slide Master. Click the top (largest) master slide.
3. Fonts → Customize Fonts: set Heading and Body to the same font family and save the theme font set.
4. Close Master View. Titles still look different because someone formatted them by hand.
5. In the thumbnail pane press Ctrl+A, then Home → Reset. Every slide now follows the master.