A master layout is the single place where you decide how every slide in a presentation looks: fonts, colours, background, title position, footer and slide number. In a practical ICT task you may be told to make the slides consistent, and the master is the reliable way to do it.
This lesson belongs to Presentations. It builds on the ideas in images, layout and styles, where styles do the same job for documents. All names, clubs and files below are invented practice material.
What belongs on the master?
Put on the master anything that must appear or behave the same on every slide. Put on an individual slide only the content that is unique to it.
- Title placeholder: position, font, size, colour.
- Body placeholder: font, size, bullet style.
- Footer items: slide number, a short deck title, a date if the task asks for one.
- Background: a plain colour or a subtle image that does not fight the text.
- A logo or club badge, if the brief asks for it, placed in a fixed corner.
A placeholder is a reserved box for a title, text or picture. Typing into a placeholder keeps the master’s style, while a loose text box you draw yourself does not.
Worked example
Brief (invented): build a six-slide talk for the Pantai Kerang Beach Clean-up Club. Every slide needs the same title style, a slide number bottom right and the text “Beach Club” bottom left.
Step 1: open the master view and select the first master slide, not a single layout.
Step 2: set the title placeholder to a heading font, bold, dark blue, left aligned, in the upper band. Set the body placeholder to a plain font in dark grey.
Step 3: in the footer area, place a slide number field bottom right and the text “Beach Club” bottom left. Use the field for the number, not typed digits, so it updates when slides move.
Step 4: check the layouts below the master. A title-only layout and a text-and-picture layout should inherit the same fonts and footer. Remove layouts you will not use.
Step 5: close the master view and add slides using the layouts. Check that slide 4 shows “4” and that its title looks the same as on slide 2.
The result: changing the title colour later takes one edit on the master, not six edits on the slides.
The mistake to watch for
A student formats each slide by hand: select the title, make it blue, drag it to the right spot, repeat. By slide six the titles sit at slightly different heights and one is a different shade.
Mistaken approach: typing the number “3” into a text box at the bottom of slide 3.
When slide 3 moves to position 5 it still says “3”.
The correction is to use the slide number field and to set the style on the master. If one slide differs, reset it to its layout rather than adjusting it by eye.
Check yourself
1. You want the title font to change on all twelve slides. Where do you make the change?
Show answer
On the master (or the layouts that inherit from it), in the title placeholder. One edit updates every slide that uses it.
2. A slide shows the wrong number after you reorder the deck. What was probably used for the number?
Show answer
Typed text instead of a slide number field. Replace it with the field, ideally placed on the master.
3. One slide needs a large picture and no body text. Should you change the master?
Show answer
No. Choose or create a picture layout under the same master. The style stays shared while the arrangement differs.
Where this leads next
With a stable master in place, choose type sizes that people can read in a readable text hierarchy. Then test your skills with the Presentations practice set. The ICT practical task and evidence checker gives a quick pass over a finished task.
Some students understand master slides but still lose time fixing slides one by one. Our teachers can look at your actual workflow in online one-to-one ICT tuition.