I'm building an extensive course where I will re-use a handful of different layouts several times each, so I want to rely heavily on slide masters. Many of them will have background images with graphic elements layered on top of them. The background images need to change every time the slide is used, but the visual elements overlayed on each image will stay consistent.
What is the best way to achieve this? I would love to rely on the slide masters so I can easily cascade changes across dozens of slides, but I haven't figured out how to set a slide master/layout that lets me change the background image on a slide-by-slide basis. I'm sure there must be a simple solution to this, but I need help finding it. Thank you for the help!
You could put all the background images into different states. Unfortunately, you can't trigger a Master object to change states from a slide. But you can add triggers on the Master Layout to change the state based on some variable. That might look something like this:
For the condition, use whatever variable makes the most sense for your course. Ideally, it'll save you time if you can use a built-in variable, such as a slide number. (You could also create your own variables, but then you'd also need triggers to adjust them.)
If I'm dealing with a couple hundred slides, I'm afraid that as clever a solution as it is (and I love that it really is a truly clever solution to the problem), it may not end up saving any time or effort in the end. I'll run it by the team, but I'm picturing having a dedicated file or spreadsheet just to images, triggers, and states. The client will be the ones making edits to the file in the future, so I don't want to throw something unexpected at them.
With that many slides, "clever" would definitely take more time.
Here's what I'd do:
Set up a Master Layout with all the necessary elements except for the background image.
Insert one slide with that layout.
Add a background image to that slide, and move it behind the other elements.
Duplicate that slide to create as many as needed.
Use the "Replace picture" function to change the background images as desired.
That still involves some tedious tasks, but it's a lot less programming to worry about. And it would be much easier for the client to understand and maintain in the future.
Otherwise, just convince the client to use only a few different backgrounds, so it wouldn't be too much trouble to have separate layouts for each. ;-)
3 Replies
You could put all the background images into different states. Unfortunately, you can't trigger a Master object to change states from a slide. But you can add triggers on the Master Layout to change the state based on some variable. That might look something like this:
For the condition, use whatever variable makes the most sense for your course. Ideally, it'll save you time if you can use a built-in variable, such as a slide number. (You could also create your own variables, but then you'd also need triggers to adjust them.)
If I'm dealing with a couple hundred slides, I'm afraid that as clever a solution as it is (and I love that it really is a truly clever solution to the problem), it may not end up saving any time or effort in the end. I'll run it by the team, but I'm picturing having a dedicated file or spreadsheet just to images, triggers, and states. The client will be the ones making edits to the file in the future, so I don't want to throw something unexpected at them.
With that many slides, "clever" would definitely take more time.
Here's what I'd do:
That still involves some tedious tasks, but it's a lot less programming to worry about. And it would be much easier for the client to understand and maintain in the future.
Otherwise, just convince the client to use only a few different backgrounds, so it wouldn't be too much trouble to have separate layouts for each. ;-)