[CRITICAL UPDATE - Anyone using Office 2003 should install the critical
update as soon as possible. From PowerPoint, choose "Help -> Check for
Updates".]
Hello,
PowerPoint does not have the capability of creating/adding custom
placeholders to the slide master and/or creating/adding customer slide
layouts which would take advantage of such custom placeholders.
There are a couple of workarounds:
A) Since you are primarly interested in text boxes, you can take advantage
of the fact that content/object placeholders can also be used for text
(just select and start typing), so you might just use the existing "Title
and 4 content" layout. OR...
B) With multiple master feature in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 you can create
a variety of almost identical slide masters with different behaviors
(animations) and placement of title and object areas for AutoLayouts so
that when used in conjunction with the existing autolayouts you can get
some additional flexibility but you are still limited to the number and
type of placeholders on in the masters to those that are listed in the
"Master Layout" dialog. OR...
C) When that is still insufficient you can also create slides that are laid
out and formatted the way you want and then you can use the Duplicate Slide
command (or just copy/paste) to make a new copy of the slide each time you
need to create a slide that uses the same layout/formatting.
Of course, if you (or anyone else reading this message) feel strongly that
some kind feature for creating custom placeholders and/or slide layouts
should be a built-in feature in PowerPoint, don't forget to send your
feedback (in YOUR OWN WORDS, please) to Microsoft at:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
As with all product suggestions, it's important that you not just state
your wish but also WHY it is important to you that your product suggestion
be implemented by Microsoft. Microsoft receives thousands of product
suggestions every day and we read each one but, in any given product
development cycle, there are only sufficient resources to address the ones
that are most important to our customers so take the extra time to state
your case as clearly and completely as possible.
IMPORTANT: Each submission should be a single suggestion (not a list of
suggestions).
John Langhans
Microsoft Corporation
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows
For FAQ's, highlights and top issues, visit the Microsoft PowerPoint
support center at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=ppt
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbhowto
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