Difference between Master Slide and Template?

In some situations you possibly could use these interchangably... but you shouldn't as there are quite a few differences. Using the wrong feature could negatively impact your development.

To begin with, a template can contain multiple pre-designed slides whereas a master slide is only one slide.

You can apply a master slide layout to the whole course of existing slides on the fly... or you can apply different Masters Slides to different slides on a slide by slide basis. The master slide can have multiple elements on it including interactivity such as buttons but is limited to one layer only. Any object on the Master will always be underneath any element (shape, picture, character, etc.) you add at the slide level.

The Template, on the other hand, already has had a master layout applied to it and can be used as a boiler plate for a whole course or module with design elements, interactions, layers, slides and navigation predesigned ready for the content to be poured in. In fact, it is this template model that facilitates the "rapid eLearning development" that you may have heard about in relation to Storyline.

There are more differences, but hopefully this is enough to give you a sense of the difference.

Stanton

Stanton,

Thank you so much for the excellent explanation! It absolutely gives me a better understanding of the difference between the two.

One more question if you don't mind me asking: how can I apply the font face style in a master slide to the font face style in a normal slide? 

It seems that if I apply a master slide layout to a slide, the font face style in the normal slide still stays the same as it is. Do I have to change the font face manually like text box by text box? 

Appreciate your effort in helping me out.

Cheng

Hi Cheng,

You may want to look at using a theme font to have the fonts be consistent across all slides. Once you set up a slide master, you'd also want to make sure that you've applied that to your slides by:

If you're in Normal View, do any of the following:

• Navigate to the slide you want to change, right-click anywhere in the workspace, scroll to Layout, and click the desired layout.
• Select one or more slides in the left navigation pane.  Then right-click the selected slide(s), scroll to Layout, and click the desired layout.  The layout you choose will be applied to all the slides you have selected.
• Select one or more slides in the left navigation pane.  Then go to the Home tab on the toolbar, click the Layout drop-down list, and click the desired layout.  The layout you choose will be applied to all the slides you have selected.

You can also apply layouts in Story View.  Do either of the following:

• Select one or more slides.  Then right-click the selected slides, scroll to Layout, and click the desired layout.  The layout you choose will be applied to all the slides you have selected.
• Select one or more slides.  Then go to the Home tab on the toolbar, click the Layout drop-down list, and click the desired layout.  The layout you choose will be applied to all the slides you have selected.

Hi Ashley, 

Thanks for providing such detailed solutions. I really appreciate the gesture. 

However, any existing text wont change its font face  when I apply a master slide layout to a normal slide. Also, I've tried the font theme solution, and it does not work either. Right now, I am just manually changing the font face for each text box. Really tedious work :(.

Cheng

Hi Cheng,

I'm unable to replicate the behavior you're describing - as updating my theme fonts, seems to change all the slide fonts, and the same with my slide master font styles. If Storyline is behaving oddly, you'll first want to check the following: 

• Work on your local drive (your C: drive).Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, includingfile corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
• You should also make sure the directory pathto your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters(for example C:\Articulate).
• Avoid using special characters, accents orsymbols in your file names.
• Next, I'd try importing it into a new Storyline project 
• Are you pasting text in from somewhere else? 
• Conduct a repair of Storyline, and also test a new Storyline project to see if the same behavior continues. 

If after testing out those troubleshooting suggestions, your .story file is still experiencing some odd behavior, are you able to share it with us?