Back at the dawn of time, when PowerPoint was first being programmed, a fateful and incorrect decision was made. Placeholder content would always appear in front of static content, regardless of how placeholders and other content were stacked on the layout. This has led to countless bald designers, from them tearing out their hair because there’s no way to place static graphics over placeholders. Here are 5 ways to work around this problem.
The Locked Graphics Graphics Over Placeholders Workaround
One way to circumvent this design flaw is to create a placeholder on the layout as usual. Then create a sample slide from it. Place the logo over the photo and lock its position in the XML. Here’s my article on how to do that: OOXML Hacking: Locking Graphics. This allows the user to replace the placeholder content while keeping the logo in front.
The disadvantage is that you can’t create a new slide from the layout. Instead, the user must copy and paste the sample slide to create another one.
The Background Picture Fill Workaround
If you’re trying to create replaceable background photos, there’s another method. Don’t place a picture placeholder on the layout. Instead, just place the graphic there. In use, the user right-clicks on the background and chooses Format Background. On the Format Background task pane, choose Picture or texture fill, then click on the File button and choose the background photo. The logo will stay on top.
The disadvantage to this technique is you have to include instructions to the end user, who may never have used a picture fill previously. My thanks to Jaakko Tuomivaara of Supergroup Studios in the UK for this tip.
Graphics Over Placeholders: The Placeholder Picture Fill Workaround
This works with any size photo, it doesn’t have to be full-frame like the previous hack. No copy and paste, no instructions required. I heard about this one from Joshua Finto (Make It So Studio in Austin, TX).
On the layout, insert a picture placeholder to hold the photo. Then add another placeholder on top, sized to exactly the same size as the logo. I use Online Image placeholders because they are rarely used, using a common placeholder type risks content being placed in it if you change layout types. Remove bullets, if there are any, and type a space character so no placeholder text appears.
In the Format Picture task pane, click on Picture or texture fill, then on the File button and fill the placeholder with the logo. Create a slide, place a photo and voila! The logo appears over top of the photo! After creating this, it’s wise to lock the placeholder in XML on that layout, to prevent distortion by the user playing with it. OOXML Hacking: Locking Graphics. EMF, SVG and transparent PNGs are all good logo formats for this application.
The Holey Placeholder (Windows)
For simple graphics, or logos contained in a simple shape like a circle or square, create a logo-shaped hole in the placeholder. Here’s how to do this in Windows:
On the layout, create the picture placeholder.
Insert the logo as an EMF vector file, then ungroup it twice, confirming with PowerPoint that you want to do this. This changes it from a placed picture to a set of vectors embedded on the layout.
With the logo parts selected, hold the Shift key and click on the placeholder.
Fill the background, or a shape placed behind the logo hole, with the logo color.
The Holey Placeholder (macOS)
If the logo is in a rectangle or circle, use this method in macOS. (It will work in Windows as well.) Place the logo over the placeholder, then draw a PowerPoint shape exactly the same size as the logo, placed over the logo precisely. Select the shape and the placeholder, then use Shape Format>Merge Shapes>Fragment, then delete the shape to reveal the logo-sized hole in the placeholder. For some reason, Merge Shapes>Subtract works differently on a Mac, deleting both the shape and the placeholder, but Fragment still get the job done. Thanks to Ute Simon for suggesting this method in the comments.
A variation on this that can be more detailed is to place a copy of the logo above the placeholder. Then, shape-by-shape, use the logo over the placeholder with the Combine variant of Merge Shapes to knock holes in the placeholder. Then add colored shapes below the placeholder to “fill” the holes. If you have compound shapes (like the letter O or A), you’ll have to release the compound shapes, then connect the inner shape with the outer one. Here’s what the end result looks like in Illustrator.
Outside line connected to inside to simulate a compound shape
Graphics Over Placeholders: The ActiveX Hack
I’m including this for completeness, but it’s the least desirable workaround, as it only can be created in PowerPoint for Windows.
Choose View>Slide Master and choose the master or the layout to which you want to add a graphic.
On the Developer tab, choose the Image control from the Controls group.
Click on the Enable ActiveX button when the Microsoft warning appears.
Draw the Image control to the size and postion the graphic will be.
Right-click on the control and choose Property Sheet.
Set the PictureSizeMode property to 3 – fmPictureSizeModeZoom.
Beside the Picture property, click on None, then click on the three-dot button that appears.
Select the graphic. The primary format choices are EMF, WMF, JPG, GIF and BMP. You cannot use a PNG file.
This process will fill the control with the chosen graphic, and the control will float above a placeholder in Slideshow mode.
There are several down-sides to this method:
If the graphic doesn’t fill the rectangle of the control, a light gray background will display in the unfilled area in PowerPoint for Windows
In PowerPoint for Mac, an ActiveX warning pops up every time you open the deck.
The graphics still fall behind the placeholders in Edit (Normal) mode. They only pop to the front in Slideshow mode.
In PowerPoint for Mac and PowerPoint for the web, some opaque white EMF shapes become transparent.
Thanks to my readers who have added some useful suggestions!
Font embedding in PowerPoint is great, when it works. But macOS users can have mysterious problems that are hard to diagnose and even harder to fix. This article sorts out the most common PowerPoint for Mac font embedding issues and how to prevent them.
Some of Your Fonts Cannot Be Saved
The client has asked that the presentation be saved with the corporate fonts, to make distribution easier. On your Mac, you choose PowerPoint>Preferences>Save and check the Embed fonts in the file option, along with the Embed all characters sub-option, so the deck can be edited. Then you choose File>Save As to get the fonts embedded. But when you click the Save button, you get a dialog that reads: Some of your fonts cannot be saved with the presentation. Save the presentation anyway?
First, trying fixing this with PowerPoint’s Edit>Find>Replace Fonts utility. If that works, you’re good to go. But if it doesn’t, you’re probably dealing with a bullet font problem.
When you create a custom bullet in PowerPoint for Mac, PowerPoint uses the macOS Emojis & Symbols utility for picking the bullet. But the Emojis & Symbols dialog doesn’t immediately tell you which font is being used. You have to click on a sample in the Font Variation area to check the typeface. If you don’t choose a font variation, the Emojis dialog will give you a symbol from one the system fonts.
System Font Regular Can’t Be Embedded
When you first try to enter a custom bullet, the Emojis & Symbols dialog appears in condensed form:
It’s nearly impossible to insert an embeddable bullet from this dialog, as only macOS system fonts are displayed. Instead, click on the expander icon in the upper right corner (circled in red) to view the large form of the dialog:
A bullet is selected, and the preview in the upper right corner is labelled BULLET. When the font name is not displaying here, you are inserting a non-embeddable bullet from an Apple system font. Saving the file displays this dialog:
System Font Regular isn’t an actual font. It’s a pointer to whatever font macOS is currently using to display opertaing system text. The font can change between releases of macOS, but the pointer retains the same name.
Unsupported Font File Format
The key to choosing an embeddable bullet is to always choose one from the Font Variation panel in the lower right side of the dialog. But not all of those variations will work! Any font with Apple in the name is formatted as an AAT (Apple Advanced Typography) font. Here, I’ve chosen Apple SD Gothic Neo Regular as the bullet font:
But when I save, I see this:
AAT fonts can’t be embedded in Office files!
PowerPoint Font Embedding – What Works
All the other fonts that I’ve tried in the Font Variations panel can be embedded. Here, I’ve chosen Arial:
The file saves! No errors!
Here’s your working procedure for custom bullets in macOS:
Always expand the Emojis & Symbols dialog to full size.
Always choose a bullet from the Font Variations panel.
Never choose a bullet from a font that has Apple in the name, nor one that is called System Font Regular
I haven’t tested every font, so there could other than cause issues. If you find one, please write to me and I’ll update this article.
Keep in mind that fonts can also have embedding permissions set by the foundry that prohibit embedding, so these would be a poor choice for use with Office. But that’s an issue in Windows as well as macOS
PowerPoint Font Embedding – Fixing a Problem
You got the dreaded Save with Fonts dialog, and you’ve tried Edit>Find>Replace Fonts. The dialog still appears. What do you do now? That’s a real problem in PowerPoint for macOS.
In Windows, I fix these issues with the following steps:
Open the file in PowerPoint, choose Save As and set the Save as type dropdown to PowerPoint XML Presentation (*.xml) and click on Save. This saves the deck as one giant XML file instead of the usual format of many small XML files tucked into a Zip archive.
Open the XML file in a text editor. NotePad will work but a real coding editor like NotePad++ or Microsoft Code is better.
Do a Find and Replace, finding typeface=”System Font Regular” (substitute the problem font name) and replacing it with typeface=”Arial” (substitute a known embeddable font name).
Save the file, open it in PowerPoint, then resave in normal .pptx or .potx format.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has not given PowerPoint for Mac the XML single-file format. So the fix requires that you check each bullet in the slide master, slide layouts and slides. PowerPoint does not have a way of seeing what the font is for existing bullets, so you have to slog through and replace every damn one! Yuck!
Out of time and no access to PowerPoint for Windows? Send the file to us, and we’ll do the fix for you.
The vast majority of presentations are created using the default templates that comes with Microsoft PowerPoint. All Microsoft-compatible PowerPoint templates have a uniform structure, and the result is that you can copy and paste slides between any deck and the paste works as expected: the content comes across perfectly, and the formatting is updated.
But in almost all corporate presentations with custom templates, this no longer works. Slides pasted from Microsoft-based presentations always need to be reformatted manually, because the custom template haven’t been created to be Microsoft-compatible.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s how to create custom templates that will be both Microsoft-compatible and have a look and feel that is brand-compatible with the organization.
What’s in a Microsoft-Compatible PowerPoint Template?
Most designers create presentation templates incorrectly for the purpose of importing of slides created with Microsoft templates. Almost universal infractions include deleting or renaming the default slide layouts, and deleting or adding placeholders on whatever default slide layouts are left. Less common methods that designers use to wreck templates include deleting all placeholders on the master slide, and deleting all default layouts, then trying to replace them
To understand why these actions could cause problems, we need to understand the PowerPoint file structure. All new blank PowerPoint files contain the following:
1 Master Slide (in Slide Master view, the larger slide at the very top of the left-hand thumbnail list). The parent to all the layouts, to which the slide layouts are children. All text formatting is inherited from this slide. Deleting placeholders here will cripple the template.
11 default slide layouts, which inherit the formatting set in the master slide. These 11 comprise:
Title Slide, for the presentation title.
Title and Content, for the bulk of the presentation content.
Section Header, to divide the deck into relevant sections.
Two Content, with 2 content areas.
Comparison, similar to Two Content, but each content area also has a corresponding heading placeholder.
Title Only, displaying only a Title field, with the rest of the slide blank.
Blank, with not even a Title field.
Content with Caption, a little-used layout the includes a Title, Text and Content placeholder.
Picture with Caption, similar to Content with Caption, but with a Picture placeholder replacing the Content one.
Title and Vertical Text This layout is intended for Asian language use and is only displayed as a choice if your operating system has an Asian language set up.
Vertical Title and Text Similar to the previous layout, only visible on computers with Asian language input enabled in the operating system.
Each of these layouts has a specific layout type, set in XML and not alterable in the program interface. You can create the correct placeholder types by generating a new, blank PowerPoint file. Each of these layouts contains placeholders for the date and slide number, plus a footer field. All but 1 have a title placeholder.
Here’s the second line of a default Microsoft layout. In this example, obj is the XML type for a Title and Content layout:
If a slide layout has been created by the user from the Insert Layout command, that layout will not have a type. Instead, the second line of the XML will include userDrawn=”1″:
PowerPoint reads the userDrawn property and will not treat your layout as a default layout no matter what you do to it. It will never be Microsoft-compatible.
If you have deleted a default slide layout, you can restore it by creating a new blank presentation, then copying and pasting the layout under the slide master of the deck to be repaired. You can also restore a default layout by running this VBA:
Sub RestoreLayout()
With ActivePresentation.Slides
.Add(.Count + 1, ppLayoutObject).Delete
End With
End Sub
The example above restores a deleted Title and Content layout. Just change ppLayoutObject to the type you need from this list:
Layout Type
VBA Parameter
Title Slide
ppLayoutTitle
Title and Content
ppLayoutObject
Section Header
ppLayoutSectionHeader
Two Content
ppLayoutTwoObjects
Comparison
ppLayoutComparison
Title Only
ppLayoutTitleOnly
Blank
ppLayoutBlank
Content with Caption
ppLayoutContentWithCaption
Picture with Caption
ppLayoutPictureWithCaption
Title and Vertical Text
ppLayoutVerticalText
Vertical Title and Text
ppLayoutVerticalTitleAndText
Here are the recommendations that Microsoft should have published with the release of PowerPoint 2007: All new PowerPoint templates should include all default slide layouts and placeholders. That would have saved so much grief! Every file would be a Microsoft-compatible PowerPoint template or theme.
Please note, I am not suggesting that you restrict your design to only these layouts and placeholders. As long as you have the default layouts with the default placeholders, the rest of the master slide view can be filled with all kinds of special-purpose layouts with any number of placeholders. Just remember, whatever you create today must be supported in the future, if the slides are to remain paste-compatible. For more details, please see my article about best practices for reusing old (legacy) slides: Legacy Slides – Best Practices
I’m adding a plea for sanity on behalf of users everwhere: restraint in slide layout numbers is best for your client’s users. Too many layouts and they just don’t know which one to pick! Don’t confuse them more than they already are. Consider a limit of 25 layouts maximum.
We have years of expertise in this area and can assess your template for Microsoft compatibility, or create a template or theme for you that will work seamlessly with decks based on Microsoft templates. We’re here to help! Contact me at production@brandwares.com.
Back at the dawn of time, when PowerPoint was first being programmed, a fateful and incorrect decision was made. Placeholder content would always appear in front of static content, regardless of how placeholders and other content were stacked on the layout. This has led to countless bald designers, from them tearing out their hair because there’s no way to place logos over photos.
The Locked Graphics Workaround
One way to circumvent this design flaw is to place a picture placeholder on the layout as usual. Then create a sample slide from it. Place the logo over the photo and lock its position in the XML. Here’s my article on how to do that: OOXML Hacking: Locking Graphics. This allows the user to replace the photo while keeping the logo in front.
The disadvantage is that you can’t create a new slide from the layout. Instead, the user must copy and paste the sample slide to create another one.
The Background Picture Fill Workaround
If the photo is a full-screen photo, there’s another method. This time, don’t place a picture placeholder on the layout. Instead, just place the logo there. In use, the user right-clicks on the background and chooses Format Background. On the Format Background task pane, choose Picture or texture fill, then click on the File button and choose the background photo. The logo will stay on top.
The disadvantage to this technique is you have to include instructions to the end user, who may never have used a picture fill previously. My thanks to Jaakko Tuomivaara of Supergroup Studios in the UK for this tip.
The Holey Placeholder Workaround
For simple logos, or logos contained in a simple shape like a circle or square, create a logo-shaped hole in the placeholder. Here’s a Windows-only version.
On the layout, create the picture placeholder.
Insert the logo as an EMF vector file, then ungroup it twice, confirming with PowerPoint that you want to do this. This changes it from a placed picture to a set of vectors embedded on the layout.
With the logo parts selected, hold the Shift key and click on the placeholder.
Fill the background, or a shape placed behind the logo hole, with the logo color.
If the logo is in a shape, you can use similar steps on both Windows and macOS computers. Using Mac command names: Place the logo over the placeholder, then draw a Shape exactly the same size as the logo, placed over the logo precisely. Select the shape and the placeholder, then use Shape Format>Merge Shapes>Fragment, then delete the shape to reveal the logo-sized hole in the placeholder. For some reason, Merge Shapes>Subtract works differently on a Mac, deleting both the shape and the placeholder, but Fragment still get the job done. Thanks to Ute Simon for suggesting this method in the comments.
A variation on this that can be more detailed is to place a copy of the logo above the placeholder. Then, shape-by-shape, use the logo over the placeholder with the Combine variant of Merge Shapes to knock holes in the placeholder. Then add colored shapes below the placeholder to “fill” the holes. If you have compound shapes (like the letter O or A), you’ll have to release the compound shapes, then connect the inner shape with the outer one. Here’s what the end result looks like in Illustrator.
Outside line connected to inside to simulate a compound shape
Logos Over Photos: The Placeholder Picture Fill Workaround
This works with any size photo, it doesn’t have to be full-frame like the previous hack. No copy and paste, no instructions required. I heard about this one from Joshua Finto (Make It So Studio in Austin, TX).
On the layout, insert a picture placeholder to hold the photo. Then add another placeholder on top, sized to exactly the same size as the logo. I use Online Image placeholders because they are rarely used, using a common placeholder type risks content being placed in it if you change layout types. Remove bullets, if there are any, and type a space character so no placeholder text appears.
In the Format Picture task pane, click on Picture or texture fill, then on the File button and fill the placeholder with the logo. Create a slide, place a photo and voila! The logo appears over top of the photo! After creating this, it’s wise to lock the placeholder in XML on that layout, to prevent distortion by the user playing with it. OOXML Hacking: Locking Graphics. EMF, SVG and transparent PNGs are all good logo formats for this application.
Microsoft maintains Feedback forums to collect feedback from users. I’ve created a suggestion there that the placeholder/shape stacking order on the layout should be respected on slides. Please add your vote here: Placeholders Should Not Pop to the Front. Perhaps we can persuade Microsoft to fix the mistake so we don’t need these time-wasting workarounds.
Thanks to my readers who have added some useful suggestions! Please read the comments for additional ideas and tips.
Having worked with many great designers, I see that they try to create variety in chart appearance rather than uniformity. So what if there was a way to have make a chart layout with the colors in a different order? This could give you layout color variations while sticking to the branding guidelines. Well, I have a solution for you, but you’re gonna have to hack some XML!
Normally, every layout under a slide master has only 1 color theme. You’re mostly stuck with those 10 colors in a fixed order. In my earlier article about Great Color Themes, I explained how the sequence of colors determines the color order of charts.
But during some recent research, I started reading about the <p:clrMapOvr> XML element. This can be applied to a slide layout to rearrange the color theme. With Accents 1 to 6 in a different order, charts can acquire a whole new look. Here’s how it works.
Layout Color Variations with clrMapOvr
At the end of most layouts, you may have seen this XML:
This tells the layout that it should use the standard color mapping as defined in the theme. We would think of this as the default or normal set of colors. But what if we want to alter this sequence? We can assign each color theme value to a different task. If you import a PowerPoint 2003 or older deck, this gets generated automatically to keep the deck looking as expected.
This reverses the order of accent colors from the master, giving charts, fills and shapes a whole new look for the slides based on this layout.
We used to tell clients “Sorry, we have to set the color order to match only one of your designed charts.” Now we have a different message: “Different chart color sequences? No problem. Just use a different layout!”
If XML hacking doesn’t interest you, Brandwares can do it for you. We’re a full-service template creation service for all Office programs. Email me at production@brandwares.com with your project details.
Legacy Slides – Making It Work the Way You Think It Should Work
Here’s an all-too-common scenario. An organization has a library of presentations built up over the years, full of valuable content. Time passes and a branding update becomes inevitable, to keep the corporate look contemporary. A designer is hired, a new template created and distributed. Users create new decks and start pasting in old slides. Chaos ensues: the formatting is all f***ed up! It could be something minor, like regular text changing to bold. But much more often, old formatting gets pasted in, and in Slide Master view you start seeing unwanted layouts, often with names preceded by numbers like 1_Title and Content. What went wrong?
PowerPoint has several requirements for pasting to work as expected. When you paste in old slides, and you want them to map to your new slide layouts, they must meet all 5 of these criteria:
The slide layout name must be the same. This can be set in Slide Master view.
The slide layout type (as set in XML) must be the same. If you copy an existing Title Slide layout, it will retain the layout type. But if you delete all Title Slide layouts, then realize you made a mistake, you’re in trouble. It’s possible to recreate a built-in slide layout by running a VBA macro:
Sub RestoreLayout()
With ActivePresentation.Slides
.Add(.Count + 1, ppLayoutObject).Delete
End With
End Sub
The number of placeholders must be the same. When there is a different number of placeholders on the slide being pasted, PowerPoint goes mental and will reassign content randomly.
The types of placeholders must be the same. If a user is pasting a Microsoft-compatible Title and Content slide, PowerPoint is looking for:
1 Title, 1 Content, 1 Date, 1 Footer and 1 Page Number placeholder. No more, no less. If your old template layout has only a Title and Content placeholder, your new template must have the same.
For corresponding placeholders in the old and new layouts, the idx number must match. Title placeholders don’t have idx numbers, because there is only one of them on a slide at a time. The idx numbers tell PowerPoint which placeholder should receive information from a particular placeholder in the old layout. This allows you to have several of the same type of placeholder on a layout and still have PowerPoint map content correctly among them.
This simplest way to guarantee that all these criteria will be met is to not create a template from a brand new file. Instead, reformat the old template to the new branding, taking care not to delete or rename any layouts (you can add new ones), and not to add or delete any placeholders on the existing layouts.
Legacy Slides – Another Possible Hiccup
An additional wrinkle can appear if an embedded image is included, perhaps for a logo. Then the XML will include a line line this:
<a:blip r:embed="rId2">
rId numbers are used by the _rels file that corresponds with the layout to tell PowerPoint where to find the logo. If the rId number is wrong, PowerPoint will show an empty box with the text The picture could not be displayed. Of course, you could just replace the image if you see this error during file construction.
Static pictures, graphics, text boxes and shapes placed on the layout make no difference to layout mapping. Add them, remove them, they won’t stop PowerPoint finding the correct layout.
If a pasted slide does not meet all of the above criteria, PowerPoint imports the slide layout from the old deck, prepending it’s name with 1_, if it’s the first time it’s importing that layout. Very quickly, the client’s deck is polluted with multiple spurious slide layouts. When face with choices like Title and Content, 1_Title and Content, 2_Title and Content, 3_Title and Content, the user will simply give up trying to decide which one to use. Branding goes down the drain.
After 3 pastes from “designer” decks, this is what your client is struggling with:
For maximum legacy compatibility, new templates you create for a client should include the slide layouts and placeholders of previous templates they have commissioned. Often it’s feasible to segregate these using different slide masters, one for each previous template they have used. Each slide master includes exactly the same layouts and placeholders used in a previous version, but with the branding updated to the new look. Then in the receiving template, the user is instructed to paste immediately after a slide based on an earlier version. This method can reduce the user’s pain of having to follow your shiny new template.
In a workflow where PowerPoint files are converted to Google Slides and back, none of the above will work. The XML created by Google is a mess and pasted slides will inevitably bring their non-standard Google layouts with them. There is no fix for this other than a custom VBA conversion macro.
We have years of expertise in this area and can either assess your template for legacy slide compatibility or create a template or theme for you that will work seamlessly with your old files. We’re here to help! Contact me at production@brandwares.com.
SuperThemes are a Microsoft-created theme format that includes more than one theme in the same file. You see them in action when you use a Microsoft theme in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows and PowerPoint 2016 for Windows and Mac. Opening a SuperTheme lights up the Design tab>Variants Gallery with design choices, like this selection used in Microsoft’s Ion Boardroom SuperTheme:
SuperThemes have 2 signficant advantages:
The design variants show right up front on the Ribbon, so users immediately see what alternate looks are available to them.
Including size variants ensure that the brand is never distorted by the user changing the slide size. The user can choose a slide size that completely fills any monitor, but the logos and artwork always remain at the aspect ratio you have set. No more graphic distortion
SuperThemes have been around for several years, but Microsoft has never released the specifications for creating them. Brandwares got to work on the problem and has reversed engineered the format. When I originally wrote this, we were the only company in the world that could create custom SuperThemes for you. But I published all the details in my book OOXML Hacking, so now anyone can do it!
SuperThemes – How They Work
Micrsoft’s SuperThemes include 4 to 8 design variants plus size variants for 16:9 and 4:3 aspect ratios. But that’s just a starting point. Down at the lab we found we can create size variants for 16:10 monitors, 35mm film and all the other preset sizes that Microsoft includes in PowerPoint. One client commissioned SuperThemes so they could display widescreen, then switch to 4:3 to print the deck on letter-size paper. Here’s a downloadable example you can try out: Test SuperTheme
This SuperTheme contains 2 design variants, one with a white background and a second with a grey background. It also includes 3 size variants, for 16:9, 16:10 and 4:3. After you download and unzip the file, copy it to the the Document Themes folder inside your Office templates folder. Under Windows, this will normally be in your user Documents folder under Custom Office Templates\Document Themes. Mac users will need to hold down the Alt key while clicking on the Go menu and choosing Library. This opens the hidden user Library. Once that’s open, look for Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Themes and copy the .thmx file to that folder.
Now open PowerPoint, select the Design tab and drop down the Theme Gallery. Now there’s a new row called Custom and that’s where you’ll find the test SuperTheme:
Select it and you’ll see 2 variants appear:
Switching design variants will change all slides in the presentation to that design. Now try changing the Slide Size. There are 2 sizes immediately available, 4:3 and 16:9. Notice that the logo remains undistorted even when the slide size changes. You can’t do that with a normal theme!
But many monitors are 16:10 and using 16:9 leaves big black bars at the top and bottom of your show. That’s not a problem with this SuperTheme. Click on Slide Size>Custom Slide Size (Slide Size>Page Setup on a Mac). Change the Slide(s) sized for: dropdown to On-Screen Show (16:10). The presentation is resized without any distortion to the logo. (Since we’ve set up just 3 sizes, if you picked one of the other sizes like Banner or 35mm Film you would see logo distortion. So don’t do that!)
When PowerPoint is using a SuperTheme with size variants, the Slide Size button works in a different way than normal. Inside of actually resizing the slide, it calls the associated size variant. If there is no variant for the chosen size, then PowerPoint resizes as usual. When you change the slide size to a smaller canvas, PowerPoint will ask whether you want to Maximise or Ensure Fit (Don’t Scale or Scale on a Mac). In a SuperTheme where you are switching to a supported size variant, it doesn’t matter which you choose, because PowerPoint won’t actually be resizing the slides. It just applies a variant theme.
SuperThemes – What You Need to Know
SuperThemes are intended for use with PowerPoint 2013 and 2016. They can be used with earlier versions, but there will only be access to the primary theme. This is normally set to Widescreen, so a user of older software should switch the slide size from the default 4:3 10″ x 7.5″ format.
Research in 2019 has revealed that SuperThemes can only be constructed from Presentations having a single Slide Master. It appears that Microsoft didn’t design the format for the additional complexity of multiple masters.
For a custom SuperTheme, you can supply separate themes or templates for each design and size variant. Each design variant can be completely independant, using different font or color themes, if needed. Multiply the number of designs by the number of sizes to know how many theme to supply. The downloadable SuperTheme above uses 2 designs in 3 sizes, so 6 themes went into its making.
Keep in mind that SuperThemes have the same shortcomings as themes. They can’t contain custom tables styles, macro programming, sample slides or preformatted notes or handout masters. If you need to be distributing any of those, consider using a template instead of a theme or SuperTheme.
When designing for SuperThemes, consider what might happen to an existing deck if the user changes the slide size after inserting graphics. If content placeholders in your variant themes have different aspect ratios, photos will still get distorted. So part of your design would be to include picture boxes that have a constant aspect ratio in all themes. They can be bigger or smaller, as long as the ratio of long side to small side is the same.
For 16:9 themes, we do not recommend the older On-screen Show (16:9) slide size produced by PowerPoint 2007 and 2010. This creates a slide that is 10″ x 5.63″. It’s the right proportion, but when a user creates a new slide in PowerPoint 2013 or 2016, it defaults to the new Widescreen size 13.333″ x 7.5″. This means your theme graphics are scaled up and you lose quality. Instead, create 16:9 themes using the Widescreen size created by newer versions.
For 16:10, we’ve found that a 12″ x 7.5″ slide size works perfectly. Of course, 4:3 slides are still 10″ x 7.5″, as always. This means that you can keep the height constant on all size variants. Only the width changes.
Then email the themes to us and we’ll assemble them for you. Too complicated? We’re a full-service Office shop: we can create complete SuperThemes from an InDesign or Illustrator file. Just tell us which slide sizes you want to support and we’ll do the rest. When we create a deck, it’s always guaranteed to work as expected, since we know Microsoft Office at least as well as you know Adobe software. Contact me at production@brandwares.com
Great color themes in Office are not a random collection of swatches. Each spot in a color theme has a job. Once you learn those functions, great color themes will roll out from your office.
I’m always astounded to hear a Office “professional” who says “I don’t use themes.” I’m amazed because in modern versions of Office it’s impossible to not to use themes. If you haven’t set a theme for your template, then you’re using the default Office theme. Whether you like it or not! Themes are an integral part of Office, so you’d better learn how they work.
I’ve previously covered Font Themes and how to hack them, a necessary skill for macOS creators. Check out XML Hacking: Font Themes and XML Hacking: Font Themes Complete. In this post, I’m covering the inner workings of theming to show you how to create great color themes. I’ve touched on this subject previously in Office Charts: 6 Colors Maximum! For ideas on how to include more than one color theme in a template or presentation, please see XML Hacking: Color Themes
Great Color Themes: The Basics
When you create a color theme in PowerPoint, the color set is added to the theme1.xml file in your presentation and it’s saved on your computer. If you create a second color theme, that theme is also saved to your computer, but it replaces the first one in your deck. When you’re using the user interface, each Slide Master has only 1 theme at a time. So for more color themes, create more slide masters. If the color theme is for a special purpose, like differently-colored charts, the extra slide master might have only 1 slide layout. That’s less confusing for users.
Great Color Themes: Color Slot Functions
Almost every slot in a color theme has a PowerPoint function, a job that it fulfills for the program. If you don’t know what these are, you’ll place the wrong color in the slot and get a result that looks weird in the program interface. Needless to say, this doesn’t help your professional cred with your client.
Here’s the Color Theme editing dialog as seen in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac. In Office for Mac, you can only create color themes in PowerPoint. In Windows versions, you can create them in any Office program, though there is a good reason why you should still use PowerPoint.
The following advice covers standard presentations that have a light background and dark text. If you’re going for the mysterious Mafioso look with a dark background, then reverse the following instructions putting text colors into the light slots and backgrounds into the dark ones. Oddly enough, when PowerPoint imports a theme exported from Word for Excel, it will default to the Mafioso look. This is the good reason why you should always export theme files from PowerPoint, where your choices for background and text are explicit and that information is preserved in the theme.
The first 4 colors are for text and backgrounds. Although all 4 are called Text/Background, that just to accommodate the occasionally light text on a dark ground, as mentioned in the previous paragraph. In reality, Dark 1 is the main text color. If you have black text in the deck, leave this set at black. You should only change this if you have no black text (Please dont’t tell me you’re doing that trendy look of black text that’s dark grey and makes it look like your printer ran out of toner. Eww.)
You may have a secondary text color for headings. That must go in the Dark 2 slot. Not in Light 1! Not in Light 2! All text colors go in the dark slots!
Light 1 is for background colors. Most of the time, this is white, so leave Light 1 set at white. If the design calls for a different background color than white, set it here.
Light 2 is the only slot in the theme that doesn’t have a secondary job. You can make this slot any color! It doesn’t matter! Woo-hoo! Let’s hold off, this is a good spot for an extra color that doesn’t fit elsewhere.
Accent 1 is the default color for inserted SmartArt, Text Boxes and Shapes. Almost all the time, you will make Accent 1 the primary corporate color. For our company, PMS 481C is the code color, so Accent 1 is the RGB equivalent in all our company themes.
If the company has a secondary brand color, Accent 2 is the logical position for it. So what about Accents 3 to 6? You’re thinking “Hey! 4 empty slots! Throw some colors in, we’re done!” Not so fast, junior.
Great Color Themes: Chart Fills
The set of Accent colors have a huge responsibility of their own: chart fills! I’ve created a color sequence to show how these are applied by PowerPoint.
Office programs fill charts using these 6 six colors in sequence. So when you’re designing, it’s best to know what that sequence is. The colors will be used in the same order:
Left to Right for Column ChartsBottom to Top for Bar ChartsFirst to Last for Line ChartsFrom 0 degrees (top dead center) clockwise for Pie Charts
If there are no additional colors in the design standards, we create a pair of lighter and darker variations of the brand colors for Accents 3 to 6. But don’t just create a pretty series of swatches! Is the chart readable when printed on a black and white laser? Can color-blind people read it? You’re a Designer! You’re supposed to be thinking of these things! The rule of thumb is to alternate darker and lighter colors in a sequence so they can be distinguished from one another even in monochrome. Not sure? Test it!
Of the 12 colors in the theme, only the first 10 are accessible to the user in color picker dialogs. The last 2, Hyperlink and Visited Hyperlink, are applied automatically when the user inserts a hyperlink in the document. I usually use 2 of the theme colors for these, rather than Microsoft’s standard colors. If there’s a blue, that’s a good choice for the hyperlink, it’s a visual cue. The followed hyperlink can be a lighter grey or other tint, if there is one in the palette.
Great Color Themes: Recognizing Trouble
Before shipping the deck, here are a few quick tests you should be performing to show any color theme problems:
Insert SmartArt: Is the text readable?Insert a chart: Does the preview look right?
If either of these look odd, you probably have a color theme problem. If the text or background of either the chart preview or SmartArt don’t match the background of the deck, you’ve probably inserted a dark color into the Light1 slot
Insert a table: Do the auto-generated variations contain many useless combinations?
Most of the autogenerated table combinations in this example are hideous and unworkable, sure sign of a bad color theme. You may also see a table style preview that looks different from the actual table. If the table preview shows a different color for table text (it will just show colored lines, not actual text), then the colors in Light2 and Dark2 have to be switched. Another problem indicator is if it appears you are selecting one color in the picker, but the actual color applied is different.
Insert a chart in Excel: Does the chart background match the worksheet background?
If you see any of the above symptoms, take the time to fix them and do it right. Your client will notice these glitches and you won’t be able to ‘splain them away.
The general method to fix these issues is to put the theme in correct order, then go through the entire deck starting with the Slide Masters, correcting the colors back to the designed appearance. This effort isn’t too bad if it’s a single template or theme you’re correcting. Groups of finished presentations are a different matter that need a more automated approach. Next time, I’ll be writing about how to repair presentations with a bad color theme, using XML Hacking.
When you choose fonts for Office, it takes a different approach than selecting typefaces for an InDesign document. One obvious difference is that you only need to install the font for a design document on the computer where it’s being created. Using the same font in an Office program will require the font to be installed on every computer using the document. Clearly, this is a much more costly solution. Aside from that, let’s look at the pitfalls of choosing fonts for Office templates.
Choosing Fonts for Office – Fake News
Most of what you see on the internet comparing font formats is wrong. Almost all modern professional fonts are OpenType format. There is PostScript-flavor OpenType, favored by Adobe and ending with .OTF And there is TrueType-flavor OpenType, Microsoft’s choice, ending with .TTF. It’s the continued use of the .TTF file ending that has misled many into thinking that they’re old-fashioned TrueType fonts. They’re not.
To verify this in macOS, open FontBook and examine a font with a .TTF ending. Make sure choose View>Show Font Info. Now look at the Kind parameter. Old-fashioned TrueType fonts would say TrueType here, but more likely you’re seeing OpenType TrueType.
In Windows, if you right-click on any file ending in .TTF and choose Properties, Type of file is reported as TrueType font file (.TTF). But this is illustrative of Windows’ relatively brain-dead design rather than any real information about the font.
Confirming this in Windows requires a few more steps. Start by opening the C:\Windows\Fonts folder. Set the View menu to Details. Now right-click in the row that displays the categories like Name, Font Style, etc. A list of avilable categories display. Choose Font Type. Now you can see that almost all the fonts are OpenType. You’ll only see TrueType if you’ve installed some old fonts from the 90s.
Choosing Fonts for Office – Designer Vanity
Designers from different geographic areas spec fonts differently. As one example, Toronto designers tend to focus on the practicalities of electronic document distribution. As a result, they will often choose Arial or Times New Roman for the user-filled portion of a template. By contrast, designers from New York focus on creating a distinct visual appearance. They choose unusual designer fonts. This creates logistical problems for their clients. They must spend money licensing for all workstations and then take time to install the fonts for each user.
Test fonts from small foundries to licensing a lot of copies. I’ve written about this issue before: Cross-platform Fonts from Small Foundries: Beware! In a mixed Windows/OS X environment, a poor quality font will not display correctly in documents that move between Mac and PC. One typical symptom is Italic text that displays as Roman or Bold when viewed on a different OS, or some similar weight/style mixup.
Choosing Fonts for Office – Collaboration
If the client uses Office documents for collaboration (Don’t know? You should be asking these questions!), you should seriously reconsider a “designer-y” font choice. When the documents arrive at your client’s client, that computer will not have the fonts and the document appearance will change drastically. Unlike web pages, Office documents do not have a font fallback setting. There is no practical way to preset which font will be substituted when the original is missing.
I know what you’re going to say next: “What about if we embed the fonts?” Here are several reasons why that might not work.
Embedding does not work at all in Office 2011 or earlier for Mac. Users of these versions can neither embed fonts, nor can they view fonts that have been embedded in Windows.
Embedding doesn’t work in Word or Excel for Mac, in both the 2016 and 2019 versions. PowerPoint 2016 for Mac users must have at least version 16.11 to view embedded fonts. The 2016 retail version (as opposed to the Office 365 subscriber version) cannot embed fonts in PowerPoint. Mac users must have at least Office 2019 retail or Office 365 version 16.17 to save embedded fonts in a PowerPoint file.
Many typefaces have restrictive embedding permissions. So even if you can embed the font and your client can see it, they will not be able to edit the document using the embedded font. You can get around this if you contact the foundry and request a version with Editable or Installable permissions. Expect to pay a surcharge for this. Some foundries charge a lot for this service, because they’re concerned about losing sales to possible piracy.
Choosing Fonts for Office – Font Families
Designers are used to Single versions of fonts. The is where each font variant appears as a separate entry in the font list in Office. If you want to change to bold or italic, you select a different font from the list. Office doesn’t usually work this way and Office users are not used to this method.
When all four faces in a font family are installed, using the bold and italic buttons has the intended effect of switching fonts.
Instead, Office users are familiar with Family fonts. This is where where a group of (usually 4) fonts is linked. To get bold or Italic variants, they click on the Bold or Italic buttons, leaving the font name the same. The foundry usually creates the font families, though there are some type utilities available that let you make a family out of single fonts. As I mentioned earlier, Microsoft hasn’t figured out how to consistently display an .OTF font family correctly. Symptoms vary but are along the lines of you choose Bold and you get Bold Italic, or a similar variant. The wrong font is shown and printed. Typocially this will manifest when moving a Windows-created document to macOS or vice versa.
If the font is not set up as a family-style font, then using the bold and italic buttons fakes the look with stroking and/or slanting the roman. The result is a disastrous visual effect.
In macOS, it’s not obvious when you are using single versus family fonts. MacOS creates family groupings on the fly. In Windows, it’s easy: install the fonts, then look at the font menu in an Office program. A font family will only have one entry for the family, while singles will list every font variant. In this screen shot, the Arials are families. Arnhem and ATC Arquette are collections of single fonts:
The Arials are families, while Arnhem and ATC Arquette are singles.
The logical conclusion to the font family approach is that your client should almost never be licensing just one or two typefaces. If four family members are not installed, Office will fake them by stroking the font for bold and slanting it for italic. As you might guess, this looks ghastly and completely off-brand.
The exceptions to this rule are:
If the document is a fillable form in Word or Excel. Those documents are typically locked so the user can’t change the font or its attributes.
The the font is used only for Headings. These are usually bold and stay that way, so there is less chance of a user applying attributes.
In either of these 2 situations, you should be able to get away with licensing a single typeface instead of a complete family.
A font family with all 4 members installed. The bold and italic button work as expected.Here is a family-style font with only the Roman installed. Using the bold or italic buttons gets you this dreadful look, plus an out-of-memory warning from Office.
If your design calls for an unusual mix of weights, like Light and Demibold instead of Regular and Bold, contact the foundry to request a custom family. There is normally a small charge for this service. However, if the licensing deal is large enough, the foundry may waive this.
Choosing Fonts for Office – 2 Solutions
To sum up, for each different font used in your design, your client should be licensing a complete family of 4 typefaces in TrueType or Truetype-flavored OpenType.
Brandwares is a font reseller and we’ve been speccing type for Office for years. If you choose us to create your templates, we can also source your client fonts in the correct format and family. This service includes free tech support. We’ll help your client with any installation or usage issues and communicate with the foundry, if necessary.
Working on your own? A simple way to eliminate all these issues is to design with the fonts that are already installed by Office. There are many faces more interesting than Arial and Times New Roman in this collection. The fonts that come with Office don’t require any additional licensing fee. They are already installed and they have relaxed embedding permissions to make collaboration easy. They are all high-quality typefaces licensed from major foundries like Monotype. Here is a list of the families that are useful for business communications (we left out Comic Sans!). For maximum compatibility among all versions of Office, use a font that is checked in every column.
Click to view larger image
This list is available as a free PDF that shows character listings for every font by clicking on the font name. Email me to get a copy: production@brandwares.com
It’s a challenge to create the absolute best quality logos for client files in Microsoft Office. Most artists choose bitmap formats for logos, usually JPEG format. Apparently this is some kind of received wisdom from artist to artist, because JPEG format is close to the worst possible format for logos. But I’ve already covered this subject in JPEG Logos? Fail! back in 2013.
Brandwares has used indexed-color PNG format for most line art (a term for non-photographic art that is mostly flat color areas). Most logos qualify as line art. But there are a couple of disadvantages to using any type of bitmap format for branding information.
With Office files, Microsoft is determined to foist image “compression” on us. I put compression in quotes because Microsoft’s solution is really downsampling by another name. Whatever the name, the results are blurry and absolutely do not reinforce the brand. All bitmap files will be downsampled unless the user chooses only a single file. You can’t protect the company logo, even with XML hacking. Let’s face it, sooner or later, bitmap logos will look like mush.
The other persistent problem with bitmap formats is what happens when you create a PDF from a document. Acrobat’s default settings assume you want to create a small file to post on a web page. This was a serious problem 20 years ago. So, once again, a software company’s helpful authoritarianism leads to default settings that cream the logos in any Office file.
Vector Formats for Best Quality Logos
For many years, we at Brandwares were aware that a vector format was a potential way out of this. Vector formats are naturals for line art, because they easily handle geometric shapes with simple coloring. But there are relatively few vector formats from which to choose, and the available formats didn’t seem up to the job.
One grandaddy of vector formats is the EPS file. Well-known to designers, the EPS doesn’t get great support in Office programs. Printing them at high resolution requires PostScript support from the printer, which is dicey in most business offices. Office programs can’t ungroup them, so adding theme color support in an Office file is out of the question.
CGM was an early contender, and is still used in technical applications. But it never got support in common file formats. SVG is making inroads on the web, but Office is only beginning to support the format.
Let’s be honest, Microsoft offers the best support to the formats it invents. For vector graphics, that is WMF and EMF. WMF is a 16-bit format that was invented in the ’90s. In practice, it’s not too useful today. All too often, WMF files do not render the inside curve of shapes like O or D. In addition, Adobe Illustrator’s WMF export is horrendous, turning every curve into a series of angled straight lines. Corel Draw does a better export, but the format is limited by its 16-bit capacity.
The format we’re left with is EMF (Enhanced MetaFile). Brandwares has developed a method to create the highest quality EMF files possible. Whatever you do, do not use EMFs exported by Adobe Illustrator! Illustrator’s curve accuracy goes down the toilet when it exports as EMF. Here’s what you’ll get, versus the type we produce:
EMF from Adobe Illustrator: wonky curves!EMF from Brandwares
We create robust logos with a tiny file size and razor sharpness at any resolution and transparent backgrounds and they will never get downsampled by Office or Acrobat!
Best Quality Logos In Use
Once we’ve placed our EMF logos in your presentation, they can be ungrouped in Windows versions of PowerPoint, then you can key part or all of it to a theme color. If your presentation contains multiple color themes, changing theme colors will change the keyed logo element automatically. This can be a slick trick for presentations with different sections in different code colors. If you’re working with a Mac, let us know and we can ungroup and key the logo parts for you.
The layout for these slides is identical. Each uses a different color theme that varies one code color.
Transparency is not supported in most EMF exports, but by importing and ungrouping the logo, you can add transparency back in. In PowerPoint, choose Drawing Tools>Shape Fill>More Fill Colors…, then set the Transparency slider. This works the other way around from Illustrator, but the units are the same. If the Illustrator file used 40% Opacity, set 60% Transparency in PowerPoint.
From L to R: each character has 10% more transparency. You can’t get this by adding transparency in Illustrator, you must re-create it in Office.
EMF are not a great candidate for objects like disclaimers. Each letter includes one or 2 complex curves, so a paragraph of text will be much larger that the same disclaimer rendered as an indexed-color PNG or even a JPEG of the same text. But for logos, they’re pretty great. You get the same small file size and pin-sharp appearance regardless of how much you enlarge it. Applying image compression or printing to a low-res PDF leaves EMF logos in pristine condition. It’s by far easiest way to create the best quality logos for Microsoft Office.
