Cannot Get Rid of a Slide Master Layout

Jan 08, 2015

Bob Wiker
By Bob Wiker

Here's a new one for me: I cannot delete a layout from a Slide Master set. The course has only eight pages, and none of them appear to use the layout.

  • I've manually inspected each page to see which layout it's using.
  • I put "FIND ME" in 72-point red bold type on the layout to help visually find it.
  • I closed and relaunched the file.
  • I quit Storyline 2 and relaunched.

No luck--Storyline still says that one slide is using it. Help.

 Story View

Side Master Layout

25 Replies
Emily Ruby
over 9 years ago01/08/15 at 8:32 pm (UTC)

Hello Bob,

Thank you for sharing the file. I went through each slide to see which one was linked to the slide master. When removing slide 1.2, the master was no longer used and could be deleted. See attached file.

You may want to try and recreate that slide and add it back into the original file. It may have been corrupted somehow.

Bob Wiker
over 7 years ago10/12/16 at 8:42 pm (UTC)

It's a good technique and it's the technique I used before asking this question. Look at the images in the original question above. I created a text box on my Slide Master with large, 72pt red text that says "Find Me" and placed it diagonally to stand out.

In this case, however, it didn't help because the affected slide was corrupted. Consequently, it didn't show the giant-sized "Find Me" text that was part of its Slide Master.

Alis Nikolson
over 5 years ago11/08/18 at 4:50 pm (UTC)

Does anyone know how to solve this same problem in Quizmaker 360? I have tried the trick of marking the master and ensuring all slides in the quiz are reassigned. At this point I am collecting useless masters that can't be deleted and they are corrupting multiple quizzes. It would take a LOT of work to rebuild them all from scratch. Any ideas?

Tom W
over 4 years ago11/26/19 at 11:42 am (UTC)

Hi everyone.

The bug that Bob experienced is still occurring in Storyline 360 and it happens almost every time I change the slide layouts, which means I end up with a bunch of master slide layouts that are corrupted and can't be used. Are there any plans to fix this bug? It's incredibly annoying and has obviously been an issue for a number of years.

Tom W
over 4 years ago11/27/19 at 11:51 am (UTC)

Hi Lauren.

Here's a link to a Peek screen recording that shows the issue:

https://360.articulate.com/review/content/d2e12811-4efc-43b8-8dff-dfcf5ad8ddc1/review

As you can see in the video, I've changed all the slides in my project to the 'Community learning' layout, but it's still saying that there's 1 slide using the 'NG' layout. I added a big shape to the NG master slide to try to identify which slide is using it, but none of the slides are (as you'll also see in the video). This happens most of the time that I change the layouts, so every project I have has corrupted master slides that I can't get rid of.

It also occurs when copying and pasting slides from other projects and change the layout.

Lauren Connelly
over 4 years ago11/27/19 at 4:41 pm (UTC)

I can see exactly what you referring to! Wow, that is something I haven't seen before. 

I would like our Support Engineers to see why this is occurring with Slide Masters. Are you comfortable sharing your file with us? You can share your file with our Support Engineers by using this link.

I'll be following along eager to see the outcome!

Debbie Kropp
over 3 years ago12/22/20 at 11:13 pm (UTC)

I have found another fix for this problem for wanting to delete Master Slides. If you have any layers, you will need to apply the layout to each layer. Then that will allow you to delete any Slide Masters you no longer want. I have attached a screen shot as an example.

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