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What is a PowerPoint Template?

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• September 16, 2017

What is a PowerPoint template?

That’s an excellent question, and one that too many professionals take for granted… which is why they often get fooled by fake templates.

So let’s dive into what templates are, and why they’re useful.

In short, a template is a pattern or blueprint for your slides that you save as a .potx file.

Templates can contain layouts, theme colors, theme fonts, theme effects, background styles, and even content” (according to Microsoft Office).

The good template news

From a speed training perspective, templates are a god-send.

That’s because they allow you to get all of your people on the same page (or  slide , if you’ll pardon my humor) about formatting.

On top of that, a properly built template makes it easy for you and you are team to maintain a consistent look and feel across all of your presentations.

They also allow you to make big changes to your presentation in one place, and have all those changes made across your entire presentation.

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Note:  If you want to see these template tips in a blog post format,  read my tips and tricks guide here .

The bad template news

The bad news, is most people’s templates don’t work properly. I’m sure you’ve heard (or said) this before:

“This template is broken…”  or  “Why can’t they just follow the corporate template?!?!”

And while it’s easy to blame the creator or the end-user of the template (and there’s plenty to dish out), the truth is that most PowerPoint templates are built and explained very poorly.

They’re not thought-out, constructed, and shared properly. Our goal is to change that.

Before we jump in though, let’s first take a quick look at what a PowerPoint template is NOT (how to spot a  fake  PowerPoint template), what a proper template is, what the differences are between a template, a PowerPoint theme, and a slide master.

What a PowerPoint template is not

If you’ve ever purchased a pre-built template on the web, chances are that you didn’t actually buy a PowerPoint template, but rather a set of inspiration-generating slides.

How to recognize a  fake  PowerPoint template

If you open the Slide Master View, you’ll see that none of the placeholders are set up or formatting correctly based on the slide layouts. Typically, they’re just slides with images, fancy fonts, and specially made icons on them.

They may look great but they don’t function as PowerPoint templates.

Why  fake  PowerPoint templates can be dangerous

A  real  PowerPoint template is designed to save you time by automating a lot of the actions you take when building a new presentation.

A  fake  PowerPoint template is the opposite – it’s a time-waster.

All it does is give you a bunch of unformatted slides to deal with, items to pick and choose from that you’ll probably have to re-format to fit your presentation, and worst of all, it pre-supposes that you’ll be able to keep everything consistent, because it leaves all that work up to you.

So it’s not just a time-waster, but it’s dangerous if you like to keep your decks consistent and professional.

What is a  real  PowerPoint template?

This is the real question. The kicker. A  real  PowerPoint template is one that it built natively in PowerPoint, using placeholders on the slide master, color palettes, and other features in PowerPoint.

A well-designed template will not only make your slides and overall presentation look good, but it will make building those slides a lot faster. It’s not just an inspiration-board, it’s a functional guide or pattern used to quickly build out any number of similar presentations.

On top of that, it’s going to ensure that everything stays consistent and polished, no matter how much content is added and who uses it.

What is the difference between a template, a theme, and a slide master?

Once again, a template “is a pattern or blueprint of a slide or group of slides that you save as a .potx file. Templates can contain layouts, theme colors, theme fonts, theme effects, background styles, and even content” (according to Microsoft Office).

A PowerPoint theme however, is simply a set of instructions that provide the formatting and layout information for your presentation, meaning primarily colors and effects. While it does contain Slide Masters, it does not have any regular PowerPoint content/slides.

As Steve Rindsberg puts it:

“You can start a new presentation based on a theme or a template; the difference is that when you start a presentation based on a template, your new presentation inherits the content … slides and such … contained in the template.”

And, as he further explains, themes work across PowerPoint, Word and Excel, whereas templates are program-specific.

A Slide Master is a set of blueprints that determine how each slide will look when you insert it in the Normal View and start building presentations. You can have multiple Slide Masters in a template or theme and each Slide Master has its own theme applied to it.

Want to learn how to create your own custom PowerPoint theme?

If you’re ready to start building out things from scratch, you can start by creating your PowerPoint Theme.  Read our guide here for details .

Want to learn how to create your own custom PowerPoint template?

If you already know all of this and want to take it a level up, you can start building your PowerPoint template from scratch.  Read our guide here .

Looking for a new PowerPoint template (that works)?

If you are looking for a professional PowerPoint template to hit the ground running with,  check out my guide here .

So that’s what a PowerPoint template is and you can use one.

Remember, there are a lot of FAKE PowerPoint templates floating around. On top of that, the people using them might have spent good money on them and have no idea they are using a bad template. So gentle if you raise the issue with them.

If you enjoyed this article and want to learn other ways to boost your PowerPoint skills,  visit us here .

What’s Next?

Related articles.

• What is a broken link chart in PowerPoint (and how to fix it)?
• Bar chart trick: Right aligning categories (PPT, Word, and Excel)
• PowerPoint settings: program level vs. presentation level
• What is a linked Excel chart in PowerPoint?
• Set Up Slide Show: Customize how your PPT presentations run

About The Author

This Post Has 5 Comments

Thoroughly confusing. All I came for was to try and figure out how to create and use a NEW presentation from a template. Why in Word, when you open a template, it spawns a virtual document and you are forced to save it as a new file, where in Powerpoint, I the corp template and it is opening the template .pptx file. It writes to the template. This is stupid.Why doesn’t it spawn a new presentation based on the template? Then, the slides along the left are of the master, how do I edit my components. Powerpoint seems to be just another useful product that Microsoft “improved” into idiocracy.

Hi there – sorry to hear your frustration and I get it. However, I wonder if the corporate template you’re using was set up correctly. When you open a PowerPoint template (.potx file), it should create a new presentation (usually called ‘Presentation1’) based on that template. You should never be overriding the template. Happy to help out if you want to record a quick video of the steps you’re taking so I can help trouble shoot, as this shouldn’t be happening. I use a free service called Loom to record quick screen demos in case that’s useful. Cheers

A PowerPoint theme however, is simply a set of instructions that provide the formatting and layout information for your presentation, meaning primarily colors and effects. It does not contain any content (such as slides or slide masters) . Hi Camille. I have been enjoying your tutorials on Youtube. Congrats.

You say in this article above that a theme does not contain a slide master. You are wrong. Was this sentence a mistake? were you in hurry? or…I don’t know. Rename any theme to…like so::: myTheme.thmx.zip And unzip itt. By, Istvan Holczer [email protected]

Hi Istvan, and thank you for catching that. You are correct – a theme does include the slide master(s). The one thing is doesn’t have is any content in the Normal View. Thanks again!

Thank you, Camille, for your answer! I KNEW that you know it! …since you have referred to Julie Terberg and Echo….the 2 KINGS of Powerpoint. You are great!!! Bye! István

Comments are closed.

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Difference between PowerPoint Templates, Themes, and Layouts?

• December 3, 2020
• Last updated: February 23, 2024

Wondering what is the difference between a PowerPoint theme and a PowerPoint template? Or what is the difference between templates and layouts in PowerPoint? You’re not alone!  When writing the feature overview for PPT Productivity's new PowerPoint Templates Manager feature , we found Microsoft’s information about each to be confusing.  We're have tried to summarize it in the following three points, plus some additional information on each in the overview guide below:

• PowerPoint Themes consist of colors, fonts, effects and background styles 
• PowerPoint Layouts are pre-designed formats which determine how information is displayed on a slide
• PowerPoint Templates bring together a PowerPoint theme and slide layouts, along with any additional customizations (e.g. your company logo saved as a background image etc) to create a foundation for your presentation 

In our experience working with large organizations, the marketing team typically own the creation of the company endorsed PowerPoint templates.  But Marketing focus on ensuring brand elements are appropriately covered (often including approved imagery and any endorsed fonts).  Quite often they haven’t given much consideration to the usability of the layouts.  The result?  Company templates often have marketing endorsed branding colors, logos and images, but they are frustrating to actually use.  The good news is that you can easily update your template to make it more efficient!

What is a Theme in PowerPoint?

A PowerPoint theme gives your template it’s 'personality'. The theme of your template determines:

• The color palette it will use for the text, shapes and background
• What type of font(s) are set as defaults
• What effects and bullet style are set as defaults

When you create a new presentation, you can either use one of the standard PowerPoint options or create your own PowerPoint theme design. To use a Microsoft pre-set theme, navigate to the ‘Design’ tab on the Standard PowerPoint ribbon.  If you’re working out of an existing PowerPoint template (e.g. if you’re working out of one of your existing company presentations that the marketing team created) then your existing template will already has a PowerPoint theme defined for it.  Using the colors designated by your presentation's theme will give your presentation a more consistent or cohesive look.

NOTE: Themes set default color, font and bullet styles. But they do not prevent users from adding other colors or fonts when using a template.

Learn how to create or customize your own color palette for a theme

On the PPT Productivity ribbon you can see the theme font of your template in the Text group

At the top of the PPT Productivity Color Toolbar you will see your theme's color palette (outlined in red below)

What are PowerPoint Layouts?

The Layout in PowerPoint determines the default placement for content on the slide and it also indicates the type of content each layout is intended for. PowerPoint layouts are the slide layouts within a PowerPoint template that contain the formatting, positioning and placeholders for the content that appears on the slide. PowerPoint has standard slide layouts, but you can also modify these layouts, or create new layouts according to your requirements.

The standard PowerPoint Template comes with several default layouts. You can change the layout used on any given slide by clicking the Layout dropdown menu from the PPT Productivity ribbon and selecting the desired layout for your slide. Or visit the ‘Home’ tab to find the Layout menu.

When creating or updating a template and selecting layouts, the layouts become ‘layout/ slide masters’.  The most important of these layout/ slide masters is the ‘Master Slide Layout’ or ‘Parent Slide’.  This is the first one that shows when you navigate to ‘View > Slide Master’.  This ‘Parent’ Slide cascades elements like page numbers or slide titles to the other layouts in its group. The subsequent layouts are known as the ‘Child Slides’. Any change you make to the first slide/ layout (‘Parent Slide’) will be replicated in the layouts below it (‘Child Masters’).

For example, if you add a logo to the ‘Parent’ master layout, it will appear on all the ‘Child’ layouts. To make unique changes to individual layouts, select that layout and adjust as needed. Changes made to Child layouts will only affect the individual layout.

Note – you do not need to create a layout for every slide format you intend to use.  Layouts are intended to save time by providing shortcuts for the more commonly used slide layouts (and enabling you to specify the layouts to be brand aligned). 

What is a PowerPoint Template?

A PowerPoint Template is the foundation of your presentation.  As part of creating a Template, you will need to include a theme and slide layouts (either by selecting default options or by customizing).

Templates are saved as .potx files.

If you are a PPT Productivity user, you can find all your Templates by clicking on the Template management icon in the File group on your top ribbon.

For a step-by-step guide to create your own Template see our post ‘Want to know how to create a custom template in PowerPoint?’

How to edit your PowerPoint Template

How do you open a powerpoint template to edit it.

To edit your .potx file, you need to find the file (in windows explorer), right click and select ‘Open’.  If you open the .potx file by double clicking or from within PowerPoint, it will trigger ‘using’ the template instead and will create a new blank document based on the template.

Once you have opened the template master you can make most updates in the same way that you would update a standard presentation. Our guide ‘Want to know how to create a custom template in PowerPoint?’ provides detailed steps on creating or editing the various elements of a template.

Hack your Template to Boost your Productivity

Templates are not always set up properly. If you address this by editing your .potx file, you can save yourself a lot of time.  Here are some of the typical problems we’ve seen and our suggestions to solve them:

• The creator of a template often includes a duplication of the layouts as actual slides in the pack.  This means that when you open the template you need to delete all the slides before you can get to work.  Our suggestion – edit the .potx file to delete these slides, so you can always open an empty deck ready for action.
• Templates are often set up to do annoying things like ‘shrink text size to fit’; or use a weird paragraph style format on indent.   Once again – open the .potx file, set the template to use the paragraph styles you prefer, and you’ll benefit every day you work on a deck!
• Use a layout quite frequently that isn’t in the default?  Our Shape Library offers layout options to make it easy, but you can also edit the .potx file to include your preferences
• Share the updated .potx with your team!  If you are frustrated that colleagues or team members are creating presentations with issues caused by the template, make the update to the .potx file and either arrange with IT for it to be updated in central deployment (if your template is centrally installed onto all machines) or simply email the updated .potx file to colleagues!

In summary, a Template is a preset of a theme, layouts and typically custom logo/ branding inserted into the layouts which provide a visual foundation for your presentation.  Slide layouts propose formats for how to layout different types of information on a slide.  The Theme determines default colors and fonts which will be used when a user adds wording or shapes to the slides.

Generally, when people refer to a PowerPoint Template, they will be referring to a combination of the layout and the theme as these are the elements that make up a PowerPoint Template as a whole.

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