After a very long time we are back with a tutorial that will set your creativity on fire. This time we are going to show you how you can design and create your own custom layouts in PowerPoint 2013. So lets get started, first of all lets explore the benefits of having custom layouts:
1) You get to create your own slides that can handle your content in pretty understandable manner
2) Helps you get the attention of your audiences
Well! you might ask why not we do straight away on slides rather than entering Masters, Yes! even that ‘s possible and easy but when you work inside Master you have the complete control of your presentations from fonts to placements etc.
This tutorial is split into two parts, the first one is on how a layout with Placeholders can be created in PowerPoint, the second one guides you on how you can tweak created layout’s Placeholders. Let’s start with the first one.
How to Create Custom Layouts & Placeholders in PowerPoint 2013?
Open PowerPoint and Select Blank presentation
Now Go to View and Select Slide Master. This will open the slide master that contains all the layout masters that are in your presentation.
Now select the existing layout slide from the slides pane that you want to edit ‘or’ you can also opt to delete the unnecessary layouts and create a new one by clicking Insert Layout within Slide Master (See Figure below) , either way we finally end up delete the existing placeholders in the layout and insert the ones that are required.
Once you’ve done inserting the layout, just delete all the Placeholders excluding Date, Footer and Slide Number.
Now its time we insert our own Placeholders that can make your slide fit with your content. So to insert Placeholder click on the Insert Placeholder drop down arrow within the ribbon under Slide Master menus and select any placeholder you would like to have on your slide layout and resize it as required. In this example we inserted Chart placeholder.
And the most important part that must not be forgotten — rename your layout so that you can find it in Layouts menu easily and apply to your presentation slides.
When you are all set with the layouts and placeholders — just close the slide master and start creating your presentation using the layouts you’ve created.
Tip: Storyboard your presentation before you start PowerPointing.
In the next tutorial we’ll explore how we can tweak default placeholders to show our content more attentive and understandable.
