Creating Multiple Slide “Masters”

PowerPoint 2000 only allows one slide master per presentation. Often that’s a good thing, because the slide master gives coherence to the entire presentation. But sometimes you want to think outside the box. Here’s how to create the look of multiple masters if you haven’t yet upgraded to 2002.

1. Create a set of slides based on the real master, one for each new “master” you want. Let’s say you want one new “master” to use at the beginning of each section in your presentation. So you would create one slide, which you can do by choosing Insert>New Slide.
2. The most common way to change this new slide is to change the background. Choose Format > Background and change the color of the background, use a picture, or create a gradient.
3. To change any background graphics that are on the slide master, check Omit background graphics from master. Now you can add your own.
4. For a nice touch, go to the master (View>Master>Slide Master). Copy graphics on the master to the Clipboard (select them and click Copy on the Standard toolbar). Return to your new slide and click Paste on the Standard toolbar. You can now edit these graphics by changing their color or size to create a variation on the original master.
5. Switch to Slide Sorter view and copy your new slide “master” (click Copy on the Standard toolbar). Click the location you want for another copy of your “master” and click Paste on the Standard toolbar. Continue to do this until you have all the copies of your new master that you need.

Here’s a PowerPoint example of a slide “master” based on PowerPoint’s Bold Stripes design template. The background has been changed to blue and the text to light gray. The stripes in the original master were recreated using rectangles (because the rectangles were not individual graphics on the master). This “master” can now be used for the title slide (first slide of the presentation) and one the first slide of each of four sections. All the other slides will use the standard master.