Powerpoint 2007 comes with built-in templates and themes however, as a small business  it is best to create your own.

So where do you start?

A template should always be created/edited using your slide master, so that when you open and edit it as a presentation the basic elements (such as your logo) of your template can’t be edited.

The best thing about using the slide master is you update everypage in one go… A huge time saver if your presentation has 50 slides.

Creating your new template

Open a new presentation, to get into the slide master view select the VIEW tab and select Slide Master option. (see Fig 1.)

Figure 1. Select Slide Master

To make changes to the template you just edit the main slide (which is the default view).  Here you can select your page orientation, colour palette, add your business logo, edit the title sizes, change the font to suit your brand, change the background and so on.

Tip: I am a big believer that less is more, so try to stick with the one colour background (white is easiest) and its best to use easy to read fonts such as Arial, Tahoma or Verdana.   You can jazz up your presentation when you add the content and animations.

Creating a new colour palette that mirrors your brand

Select the colour button, and scroll down to the bottom of the list and select the Create New Theme Colours (see Fig 2.)

Figure 2. Select Create New Theme Colours

This will bring up the New Colour Theme option, you can add in the different text/background colours, 6 different colour accents, hyperlink and followed hyperlink colours (See Fig 3.)

All you do is select the colours you would like to add into the template that match your branding.  To match your logo colours exactly select the ‘More colours’ option (you will need to know your colour breakdowns in either RGB or HSL format – a great tool to find this out is www.palettebuilder.com)

Name your colour palette and select Save.  Your colour palette theme will now show up in the drop down menu which you can select this at anytime using Powerpoint.

Figure 3. Create New Theme Colours

Tip: You can also create your own colour palette in Word and Excel.

Editing the different slide layout

Another great feature of Powerpoint 2007 is the different Slide Layouts, E.g. your basic title slide, content slide, title only slide, picture slides etc.

If you would like to make your title only slide different to your content slide you can edit the slide layouts via the navigation pane on the left hand side of your presentation.  (See fig 4)

All you need to do is select which slide you would like to edit, make the relevant changes and that will update that slide layout.

Figure 4. Slide Layouts

Creating a custom Slide Layout

If you find that you woud like to add more slide layouts to your presentation, you can do that easily.

Select Insert layout which will insert a new slide, then to add different content (Eg. Smart Art, Image, Video, bullet list) select Insert Placeholders (See Fig 5.).  You can then design your slide layout to how you please.

Figure 5. Custom Layouts

Tip: Once you design your slide, you will need to rename it.  Select the slide in the navigation pane, right click and select rename slide.

Finishing off your template

That is basically it your template is now nearly done!

Select Close Master View

Save your document as a 2007 presentation and there you have your own business template  and are free to add content and animations as you please.

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