PowerPoint Templates

How To Apply A PowerPoint Template

A PowerPoint template is like a blueprint for the presentation you want to create. If you create your new presentation from a template the presentation uses the layout, colour schemes and other styling elements that were defined in the template. There are some really stylish templates that ship with PowerPoint and using them can save you a whole heap of time. You can even make changes to the presentation and save that as a template itself, so you can use it to base other presentations on.

Note that, unlike themes, once you have created a presentation, you can't then change the template used.

To create a new PowerPoint presentation based on a template, click the File tab > New, and you'll see some categories. For this example, let's click on Sample Templates. These are the ready made templates that come with PowerPoint.

In the centre pane, you can see thumbnail images of all the templates in that category. If you click on one, you will see a preview of it over on the right. When you find a template you like, select it and click Create. A new presentation will then open based on the template you chose. At this point the presentation is still unnamed, so press ctrl-s to save it.

The template creates a number of slides automatically and defines the slide layouts, colours and styling used on each one. Of course, you can modify the presentation by deleting slides, adding new ones and changing all the styling elements.

If you find that you have created a stunning presentation that you would like to use to base future presentations on, you can save it as a template. To do this, click the File tab > Save As, name the template and then change the Save as type to PowerPoint Template (*potx). The Save As dialogue box automatically changes the location to be the default PowerPoint Templates folder but you can save your new template anywhere. Next time you create a new presentation, you will see this template in the My Templates category.