Building the First Slide

In this project, we're going to create a starting slide based on our original theme design using the custom slide layouts we created in the last chapter.

If you're following along, I'm working in Lesson Files > Chapter_05 > FirstSlide_Start.pptx.


Step 1: Setting up the template slide

In this step, we'll take the most persistent elements of our course and build a working template. The template will be used to quickly create slide placeholders for our course.

With FirstSlide_Start.pptx open, right-click Slide 1 and select Layout > Content_Body to apply the layout. The

Even though the course's first slide doesn't use this layout, Content_Body is the most common layout used in the course.


Step 2: Updating the text placeholders

For the text placeholders, you can either use titles and text from the DIYTC_Storyboard, or you can type some simple text into the placeholders. What's important here is that you add some text - empty placeholders won't display content.

Because we're creating slide placeholders, I prefer to type some quick text and update with real text later. You can even re-enter the same used for the placeholders.

After updating the text placeholders, you'll notice the dotted box disappears to indicate live text is inserted.

Step 3: Updating the image placeholders

Let's go ahead and add replace those image placeholders.

If you're following along, I'm working in the Lesson Files > Chapter_05 > Images folder.

  1. Add the chapter label graphic by clicking the Insert Picture from File icon and browsing to Images > Slide-00.png
  2. Next, insert the car image by clicking the Insert Picture from File icon and browsing to Images > car.png
  3. Repeat for the content image placeholder (Images > content_img.png) and the DKY icon (Images > icon-warning.png)

And here's what our slide placeholder looks like:

Update the Selection Pane

You might have noticed that the layer names you created in your Slide Master didn't carry over to the slide level. We should take a minute to update the layers based on the naming convention we used in the Slide Masters.

PowerPoint retains layer names when we duplicate the slides so we won't have to update every slide.


What's Next?

Our slide looks good. We used the Content_Body layout to set up our text and image placeholders. In the next lesson we'll finalize our slide placeholder by adding the default animations.

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