Format All Placeholders (XP)

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I have five presentations with lots of slides. All of the title placeholders jump around slightly. I want to format the placeholders to all be exactly the same position and size. I know how to do that one-at-a-time but that is a major time. In Word, I could do the formatting once and then click on each title and press F4 to repeat the formatting for the next, and so on. That does not seem to work in PowerPoint. Is there a better way than one-at-a-time?

Ronny

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This is what the master view is used for – go to the master view and format the placeholders as desired. All of the slides connected with that master will be formated.
With one exception…
Now if you have individually formatted any slide – the connection between the slide and the master is “jammed” and changes made to the master are not displayed. This used to be the end of the story. However in XP you can clear the formatting that you’ve applied and let the master reconnect with the slide. Simply select the text block and use the Ctrl + Spacebar shortcut.

Cheers

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Edited by HansV to reduce attached image in size – please don’t post pictures larger than 640×480 pixels.

I’m trying to apply a new template to an existing presentation created by someone else and it appears that every single slide was manually reformatted (Ugh.) I’ve applied the new template in the Master view and the few slides that were not manually reformatted have taken on the new measurements. I tried the Control-Space but it does not seem to reset things. In the example below, the title placeholder is set for horizontal position of 1.25, vertical of 0, height of 1, and width of 8.67. I tried using Control-Space to reset these and, as you can see, they remained at the old settings.

In Word, all Control-Space does is reset character formatting and it does seem to do that in PowerPoint. In Word, Control-Q resets paragraph spacing but that causes you to quit PowerPoint.

Ronny

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You can try this little macro. It should restore all placeholders to the default layout.

Sub RestoreSlides()
Dim sld As Slide
For Each sld In ActivePresentation.Slides
sld.Layout = sld.Layout
Next sld
End Sub

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You might want to try the free RnR Starter Set add-in, then. Use the “memorize position” tool to pick up placement settings for one object, then use the “place exactly” (the hammer) tool to hammer other objects into place. http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/starterset/FAQ00011.htm%5B/url%5D gives better instrux for using these two tools.

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