Video: Create slide content and save the template

Now it’s time to create the slides that will be part of the template, then click File > Save As, and choose PowerPoint Template (.potx) as the file type.

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Create and save a template

Use slide masters to customize a presentation

Apply and change a theme

I’ve got my design elements in place in the Coho Premium Selections presentation, and now I’m creating slides that will be part of the template.

The title slide always has this text. What does change is the year. I’ll use placeholder text for that and type “Year,” in brackets.

For slide 2, the mission statement slide, this title never changes. However, the bullet points do, so I’ve typed in placeholders.

I do want to format this list. Let’s select it, click Convert to SmartArt Graphic, and choose SmartArt for a list.

I’ll zoom in a little, and click this picture icon to insert an image I’ve prepared. I’ll do that for each bullet point.

Then with the SmartArt selected, I’ll click Design in SmartArt Tools, use Change Colors to tone down the colors, and add a SmartArt style.

With this formatting applied, all an author has to do is fill in the text.

Other slides we can add are the section headers-- let’s click New Slide, Section Header, add the title and subtitle, and a placeholder for the year.

With three section headers in, we’re adding both content and structure to the presentation.

Now we’ll click New Slide and use our new layout, Wine Profile.

Here we can add subheadings, such as: “Grape region,” and others.

I’ll format them with bold text and add text placeholders. This is optional, but these can also serve as authoring guidelines.

Now, to help with picture formatting, I’ll click Pictures and insert a piece of placeholder art.

Using Picture Tools, I’ll add a Picture Style, a black frame.

Working with Picture Border, I’ll change the frame color and increase its width. Then I’ll use Picture Effects to add a perspective shadow.

To benefit from this formatting, the presentation’s author would right-click the picture and choose Change Picture.

Then the finished picture retains the frame.

To make those steps clear, you could include guidelines in a text box, which the author would delete.

Because this slide is used a lot in the presentation, I’ll copy it several times, and the author can copy it again as needed.

We’re ready to save the file as a template. I’ll click File, Save As, and choose PowerPoint Template (.potx) as the file type.

Note that after I select the template file type, PowerPoint automatically creates a new location for the template: Custom Office Templates, within Documents, My Documents.

To make it very clear that this is a template, I’ll add “template” to the file name and click Save.

To use the template, I open PowerPoint, and on the New screen, click Personal.

There’s the template; I’ll click it and click Create. The template opens a fresh presentation, and this is where I’d update the slides for the current year.

If I had downloaded the template from a shared site, I would save it in a preferred folder and then double-click it to open a new presentation.

If I needed to edit the template itself, I would right-click the file, and click Open.

Creating a template takes some time up front. But once it’s in place, you’ll save yourself lots of effort down the road.

Next steps: For more information, see the Course summary, and experiment on your own.