Editing the slide master

What the slide master is

In a PowerPoint presentation, the slide master holds the items that appear behind every slide — a logo, a line under the title area, a coloured band — along with the background and the prototype title and text boxes. Each layout is built on the master and can add items of its own.

Nixt Slides draws a slide in three layers, from back to front:

1. The master’s items (unless the layout or the slide is set in the file to hide them).
2. The layout’s items.
3. The slide’s own shapes.

To change the master’s items, open the slide master view.

Open the slide master

1. Choose View › Master views and click the layout button (tooltip “Edit the slide master — the logo, the rule, the band every slide under it shows”).

The canvas now shows the master. A banner across the top says “Slide master”, followed by the master’s name when it has one, and ”— what you change here changes every slide built on it.” The slide list and the speaker notes pane are hidden while the master is open.

The button is unavailable, with the tooltip “This deck has no slide master to edit”, when the presentation has no master. For a presentation you created in Nixt Slides, the slide master is available once you save it and open it again.

If a presentation has more than one slide master, the first one opens.

What you can change on the master

Everything on the master that isn’t a placeholder can be edited with the same commands you use on a slide:

• Select items, and set their position and size in the slide inspector.
• Change fill, apply Quick styles, and use bold, italic, alignment and bullets.
• Bring to front, send to back, line up, space out, group and ungroup.
• Delete items, and add text boxes, rectangles, ellipses, pictures and tables from the Insert tab.

Your changes show behind every slide that uses the master as soon as you close the master view.

The master’s placeholders — the prototype title, text, date, footer and slide number boxes — are left exactly as they are in the file, so the layout of every slide is unaffected.

While the master is open

Commands that change the slides don’t run while the master is open. Adding, duplicating or deleting a slide, or starting the slide show, shows this message in the status bar instead:

“Close the slide master first — this changes the deck, and the master is what every slide in it is built on.”

Close the slide master

Do either of these:

• Click Close master at the right of the banner (tooltip “Go back to the slides”).
• Choose View › Master views and click the layout button again (tooltip “Close the master and go back to the slides”).

You return to the slide you were on.

How the master is saved

Changes to the master are saved whether or not the slide master view is still open.

• If you changed the master’s items, its items are saved and its placeholders are kept unchanged.
• If you didn’t change the master, it is saved exactly as it was.

Changes to the master can be undone like any other change.