Unable to configure slide master to use condensed font spacing or bulleted lists

Mar 30, 2020

I'm trying to format a slide master to match my organization's PowerPoint template. Unfortunately, I cannot configure the slide master to accept a condensed font. Nor can I change the master text style to be a bulleted list on the title and content slide master. I originally started by importing the PowerPoint template. When I had issues with that, I just used the standard template, but I see the same behavior. I attached a short movie demonstrating the behavior. Is this expected?

15 Replies
Alison Coops

Good morning,

This is one of the things making my life miserable yesterday and today.  It's more general than just not saving bullets.  The slide masters don't work the way they should (the way they do in PowerPoint).  For example, I just modified a slide master.  That should modify most of the layouts based on that master.  It didn't.  So I tried copying my modified title box from the master slide to the title and content layout master.  When I applied that to a slide (which should happen automatically - When a master is updated, all of the slides that use that master unmodified should be automatically updated) the slide title became "Click to edit Master Text Style". Also, I wanted to put the slide title text box behind an overlapping text box on the left (so it would center correctly). I can't put it behind the box on the left (which is on the Master slide - but the title text box is also on the Master slide.

Alison Coops

And the Format Painter doesn't work the way it should (the way it does in PowerPoint) either.  The current issue I'm having is that I tried to use the format painter to exactly copy the formatting of the Title text box onto the text box of the Title and Content slide - which it should have included by itself, but it didn't.  But when I use the format painter, that's when a slide that I apply that layout to gets "Click to Add Text" as the title for that slide.  In PowerPoint, the Format Painter can be used to copy either all of the font formatting, or all of the paragraph formatting from a source to a destination (depending on if the invisible paragraph symbol was selected). In Storyline it seems to consistently copy some of the formatting, but not all.  Very frustrating and wastes time.

Katie Riggio

Good morning, Alison!

So sorry you hit a few snags while building out your course. Let's explore both behaviors together:

Slide Masters 

You're right. Each layout should inherit all the properties of its parent slide master.

Does this short recording capture what you see on your end?

If not, could I have you record a Peek 360 video of both issues so I can see each one in action? I'd like to understand better so I can best recreate your experience.

Format Painter

The format painter will copy font size and text color, but you'll need to manually adjust paragraph settings like spacing, indentation, and bullet size.

Here's a quick example. And, let me know if you see different behavior in this area as well!

Related Guides ☟

Alison Coops

Hi Katie,

Your video basically captures some of the errors I was encountering
yesterday. The next step you didn't include is the effect of those changes
on slides that 1) already use that master/layout and 2) slides to which
that master/layout are applied/reapplied.
I have Storyline 3, not 360.
I would like to formally request an enhancement that the format painter
should copy paragraph settings. Also, you didn't address the issue of the
slide master and layouts not working for paragraph formatting. Paragraph
formatting is an important component of slide masters, and if it doesn't
work it makes them slightly useless.

Thanks,

*Alison *

Alison Coops

Possibly relevant information: The powerpoint that I imported was without
any master slide or background slide. Then I imported a Storyline slide
from a previous course in the series to get the master slide that I
wanted. I then applied the desired layouts of the master to the slides of
the storyline file, but at some point decided that I wanted to make changes
to the master slide. That's when I started running into serious problems.

Thanks,

*Alison *

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