How to Change the Default Slide Layout in PowerPoint

powerpoint I don’t need to tell you PowerPoint isn’t perfect.

PowerPoint offers up 31 different slide layouts for you to choose from - but does not allow you set your preferred default slide layout.

Instead, it always creates a new presentation with a slide with the ‘Title’ layout, and a ‘Text’ slide every time you insert a new slide.

This setup may be useful for most people, but there are times I have to assemble a slide deck which would contain a lot of very specific slides - for example, completely blank slides for a picture heavy presentation.

Fortunately, when I posed this question on Google Groups a friendly Microsoft MVP stepped in to provide this lovely free add-in you can download which sets default slide layouts.

Enjoy!

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    • 9 Responses to 'How to Change the Default Slide Layout in PowerPoint'

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    1. Anon said,

      on April 13th, 2007 at 11:30 am

      Good god! I just spent a long time trying to figure out how to solve this annoying problem, until google brought this page up. Thanks for the fix.

    2. Brad said,

      on September 28th, 2007 at 3:51 am

      You’d think that a blank layout would be a default… the hours I’ve spent cursing microsoft, trying to turn off all the ‘helpful settings’ they always turn on… I’ve come to the conclusion that PowerPoint is a window into the mind of a bureaucrat. Everything is set up, so you can fit your life into their tidy, pre-formatted boxes.

    3. Carl Manaster said,

      on October 6th, 2007 at 1:55 am

      Thanks so much for this! Like Brad and Anon I have been wanting this for a very long time, and finally had the sense to google for it.

    4. n1ce said,

      on November 2nd, 2007 at 12:05 pm

      The mvps website states “There no way to set a default layout to be used whenever a new slide is inserted into the presentation. The Set Default Layout add-in is specifically designed to tackle this annoyance.”… annoyance?! Unbelievable that Powerpoint has no obvious way to change the default. Yet more reason to use google docs!

    5. Anonymous said,

      on May 28th, 2008 at 3:34 am

      AGGGGGGHHH!!!! Thanks for posting this. you saved me some time.

    6. Anonymous said,

      on June 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

      thanks heaps… that saves me so much time.

    7. Jill said,

      on July 4th, 2008 at 3:38 am

      Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve always wanted the default slide to be set to Blank and now it’s finally happened! I’m using PowerPoint 2007 and was a little worried it wasn’t going to work but it does. :-)

    8. Damian said,

      on August 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm

      It doesn’t work for me on 2003 Pro :-(

      I just get an error “PowerPoint couldn’t load the add-in layout”

      Any ideas?

    9. James Yeang said,

      on August 3rd, 2008 at 9:38 pm

      @Damian: Really? Strange, because I activated the add-in with PPT 2003 during my testing… not sure what’s wrong in your instance. Thanks for the feedback anyhow

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