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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
May 28th, 2008 at 3:34 am
AGGGGGGHHH!!!! Thanks for posting this. you saved me some time.
June 15th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
thanks heaps… that saves me so much time.
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. :-)
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?
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
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
how yo download the layouts?
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Hi cris – you can download the program to save whatever layouts you choose. Layouts are defined by you to suit your convenience.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:59 am
Where do I find the Powerpoint Add-In for the default silde? There is a nice description but no download link.
March 7th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Hi Don,
The link is in the post, but in case you still can’t find it:
Check out:
http://skp.mvps.org/setlayout.htm
Cheers
James
March 11th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Wonderful!
Thank you.
June 11th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Thank you for the solution to this problem.
I had to change the security level of the macros prior to installing the addin. tools->options->Security tab->Macro Security button->Set to Medium or Low