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What is a Slide Layout ?

A slide layout is an arrangement of placeholders which are designed to help you position your slide content.

The layout refers to the way that the objects are arranged on the slides.

A slide layout will contain placeholder for particular objects (e.g. text, charts, clipart etc).

Depending on which slide layout you use will depend on where PowerPoint positions your content.

There are several different types of placeholder that can appear on your slide layouts:

Every slide has a slide layout that controls how the information is arranged on the slide.

A slide layout is just a collection of one or more placeholders which set aside an area of the slide to hold certain information.

Advantages of the Slide Layouts

Slide Layout Task Pane

You can change a slides layout template by selecting (Format > Slide Layout) to display the slide layout task pane.

Using this task pane is the only way to change the slide layout.

There are 24 different slide layouts to choose from and these are described in more detail on the next page.

Show when inserting new slides - When you insert a new slide you can display the slide layout task pane automatically.

All the slides are based on slide layouts.

Things to Remember

You can also insert a new slide from within the task pane. Point to the layout you want the slide to have, click the arrow, and then click Insert New Slide.