Reusing well-designed slides across multiple PowerPoint presentations saves time and effort while ensuring brand consistency. Instead of recreating the same slide layouts, color schemes, and formatting every time, you can save your custom slide designs as templates to quickly apply in future presentations.
This step-by-step guide will show you how to save a slide design, including colors, fonts, layouts, and placeholder customizations, as a template file in PowerPoint. You’ll learn:
- How to access and customize PowerPoint’s Slide Master view
- Tips for designing reusable slide layouts
- The process for saving a custom theme or template
- How to apply saved templates to new presentations
Follow these steps to efficiently repurpose your best slide ideas across all your PowerPoint decks.
Step 1: Open the Presentation with the Slide Design to Save
First, open the PowerPoint presentation containing the slide design you want to save as a template. This could be a finished deck or one you created specifically for harvesting layouts and themes.
Review the slides and make sure the color scheme, font choices, formatted placeholders, background design, and layouts are exactly as you want them for reuse.
Step 2: Customize the Slide Master and Layouts
Next, switch to Slide Master view to customize the master slides and layouts. These changes will apply to all slides in your presentation.
- On the View tab of the ribbon, click Slide Master.
- In the left pane, click Slide Master to edit the slide background, theme colors, and font schemes.
- Click individual slide layouts to customize placeholders, add graphical elements, etc.
- When finished editing, close Slide Master view.
Modifying the slide master and layouts ensures all slides in your new template file will share consistent, on-brand design.
Step 3: Design Save-Worthy Slide Layouts
With the foundations set in Slide Master view, design individual slides to act as layout samples in your template.
These slides should demonstrate how others can effectively use your saved layouts. Some ideas:
- Insert text placeholders to show ideal content hierarchy
- Demonstrate graphical elements and principles
- Use sample charts, tables, images
- Include multiple examples of one layout type
Delete any slides not relevant for your template file. Remember, less is more! You want a focused set of versatile layouts.
Step 4: Save the File as a PowerPoint Template
Once your sample slides are complete, save your presentation as a template file (.potx) to reuse anywhere.
- Go to File > Save As in the top menu.
- Select the location to save your template file.
- Name your template file.
- From the Save as type dropdown, choose PowerPoint Template (.potx).
- Click Save.
PowerPoint will automatically save your template in the Custom Office Templates folder for easy access later.
Step 5: Apply Templates to New Presentations
That’s it! You’ve successfully saved your original slide design as a reusable PowerPoint template.
Now, follow these steps to leverage your saved template in a future deck:
- Create a new blank presentation.
- On the Home tab, click New Slide > Reuse Slides.
- Choose your template file to apply its slide designs.
- Customize placeholders with your own content.
Saving exceptional slides as templates lets you replicate visual styles quickly. With a personalized library of layouts, themes, and masters, you can speed up your PowerPoint workflow while maintaining consistent branding every time.
Recap and Key Takeaways
- Access Slide Master view to customize slide backgrounds, colors, fonts, and layouts
- Design sample slides to demonstrate layouts and establish hierarchy
- Save presentations as .potx files to create reusable templates
- Apply saved templates to quickly format new presentations
Creating templates from your best slide ideas helps produce polished PowerPoints in less time. You no longer have to endlessly tweak formatting and layouts to maintain visual consistency across decks.
Now that you know how to easily repurpose exceptional slides as templates in PowerPoint, you can focus on what matters most — the content.
