It doesn’t take a genius to make a presentation look great. All you need is a set of well designed master slides. Now read on for five top tips to help you get the most out of your master slides.
1. Use a single slide master for simple presentations
Formatting presentations in PowerPoint can be a painstaking process, especially if there are number of elements on each slide. But if all these elements are common to each slide, you can make sure that all the slides look the same by creating a single slide master.
2. Use multiple slide masters for complex presentations
If you’re working on a complex piece of work such as a storyboard, you might find it best to create multiple slide masters, each one representing a specific screen type. This saves time and effort and ensures that the screen types are consistent across your storyboards.
3. Reduce the file size of your presentations
Presentations can become quite large, especially if you are using a lot of images. Creating master slides not only saves time but also minimises the file size. For example, if you are using a 1MB image five times, instead of adding it to five slides just add it to one slide master and reuse it as often as you like.
4. Remember: not everything is ruled by master slides
Even if you are using master slides, you can still make changes to individual slides. And if you edit a slide master, you won’t lose those changes. However, if you delete a slide master, the formatting will change so make sure you either create a new slide master or apply another appropriate one that already exists.
5. Save master slides for later
PowerPoint often automatically deletes a slide master if it’s not being used in a presentation. So, if you’ve created a slide master which you’re not using in your current presentation, make sure you preserve it by right-clicking on the slide and selecting the Preserve Master option. That way you know you can use it another time.
