How to Make a Custom Slide Layout in PowerPoint 2007

Posted By Frank on April 27, 2010
in Knowledge & Tips & Skills

What is a Slide Layout?

In PowerPoint, a slide layout arranges all elements like title, subtitle text, lists, pictures, tables, charts, AutoShapes, sounds, and movie clips within a slide. Slide layouts are related to placeholders, which refer to the containers in layouts that hold such content as text (including body text, bulleted lists, and titles), tables, charts, SmartArt graphics, movies, sounds, pictures, and clip art.

PowerPoint 2007 and earlier have a set of built-in slide layouts, also called standard layouts that you can use for your presentation. See the sample below:

How Do You Make a Custom Slide Layout in PowerPoint?

If you are not satisfied with a built-in slide layout, you can make a new custom one that matches your slide content. It’s a piece of cake. In the Slide Master view, locate the ‘Blank Layout’ in the thumbnail list of layouts. You can customize that layout by adding text-specific and object-specific placeholders like Content, Text, Pictures, Charts, Tables, Diagrams, SmartArt graphics, Media, Clip Art, Movies and Sounds.

To make a custom slide layout for your PowerPoint 2007 presentation, do the following:

1. Click the View tab -> Presentation Views -> Slide Master to enable the slide master tab.

2. Go to the Slide Master tab, in the Edit Master group, click Insert Layout. You can see a new layout appear in the left pane.

3. To make changes on the layout, do one of the following:

To add a new placeholder, perform these steps:

a. Under the Slide Master tab, in the Master Layout group, click Insert Placeholder and choose one placeholder type from the dropdown list.

b. Click a blank on the layout, and drag to draw the placeholder.

c. To resize the placeholder, drag one of its border.

d. Repeat the steps above to add in more placeholders to the new layout.

e. Done. In the thumbnail list, select the layout, in Edit Master, click Rename to type a new name for the slide layout.

To remove default placeholders like headers, footers, or the date and time, click the border of the placeholder, and then press DELETE.

4. Go back to the Office button, and click Save As.

5. In the Save As dialog, rename the presentation file or leave it be default. In the Save as type list, select to save it as a PowerPoint template (.potx or .potm).

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