How to Fix Multiple Slide Masters in PowerPoint?

In general, there is no need to have multiple Slide Masters in a PowerPoint presentation. Design teams will sometimes create PowerPoint Templates with multiple masters, but it's not best practice. Usually it occurs because the teams responsible do not use the PowerPoint templates themselves to actually create presentations. Creating PowerPoint Templates with multiple slide masters can cause unnecessary issues when using the templates - particularly impacting presentation file size and the consistency of the presentation.

If your PowerPoint Presentation or Template contains multiple masters, the easiest way to fix this is by deleting the Slide Masters that are not required. But you need to take care when doing this, to make sure your presentation is not using the slide masters that you plan to delete.

This post provides some explanation of how multiple slide masters in PowerPoint occur and troubleshooting steps to remove the multiple slide masters. Or if you'd like a PowerPoint add-in that can solve this for you in a single click, skip to the end to read about PPT Productivity's new Proofing Tools features.

How do PowerPoint Templates end up with multiple slide masters?

As previously mentioned, a PowerPoint template may end up with multiple slide masters when a designer creates the template and adds them intentionally. Another cause of multiple master slides in the same PowerPoint Template is when slides have been pasted in from other PowerPoint documents and the PowerPoint Keep Source Formatting option has been selected (in order to preserve the source formatting, PowerPoint adds the template slide master from the added slide, to the Slide Master of the presentation it is pasted into).

To avoid inadvertently adding additional Slide Masters to PowerPoint presentations, it's recommended to select the ‘Use Destination theme’ option when pasting slides from other PowerPoint decks (unless you require the pasted slides to have the same font and color scheme as their original presentation).

How do I remove PowerPoint Slide Masters that are not part of my Presentations Template?

First up - where is Slide Master in PowerPoint? If you haven't previously worked with Slide masters in PowerPoint, here's a step by step guide along with screenshots to help.

Step 1: To check whether your PowerPoint presentation has multiple slide masters, go to 'Layout' either on the PowerPoint Home tab (or the PPT Productivity tab if you use PPT Productivity PowerPoint add in ). Click to reveal the dropdown menu. Here you will see a thumbnail list of all the PowerPoint Slide Master layouts contained in your presentation.

Step 2: If you’ve discovered that your presentation has multiple PowerPoint Masters that need to be removed, go to the View tab on the top ribbon and select Slide Master.

Step 3: In Slide Master view, you will see a list of all the master layouts included in your template on the left hand side (refer to the screenshot example below).

Step 4: If any of the slides in your PowerPoint presentation are currently using a layout from any group of Master Slides, you will not be able to delete the Slide Master. However you can solve this by updating the slides using the slide masters to apply a different slide layout before you proceed.

I'll explain later in this article how to change the layout of an existing PowerPoint slide (scroll down for assistance on this), but for now, lets assume none of the PowerPoint Master Slide layouts you need to remove are being used by slides in in your presentation.

Step 5: To remove one or more Slide Masters from your Presentation Template, while still in Slide Master View, select the Parent Master slide (i.e the first slide in the group) thumbnail from the left hand side of your Master Slides, Right mouse click and select 'Delete Master' from the dropdown menu.

The 'Parent' and any 'Child Slides' will be removed from your Presentation Template. (To learn more about Parent and Child Slides read our article 'Difference between PowerPoint Templates, Themes, and Layouts?')

Step 6: Continue to delete all unused / superfluous Slide Masters until you only have one set of Master Layouts remaining in your PowerPoint Presentation Template.

Removing multiple PowerPoint slide masters should greatly reduce the file size of your presentation - for large PowerPoint presentations, this can make it much easier to email.

Step 7: To further reduce the file size of your PowerPoint presentation, you may also wish to remove unused Child layouts from your PowerPoint Template. To do this, click on each individual PowerPoint Master Slide Layout, i.e. the 'Child' Layout not the 'Parent', then right click and select 'Delete Layout'. Only the selected Child Layout will be removed from your PowerPoint Template, not the whole group of slide layouts.

How do I change a PowerPoint slide layout to delete the Slide Master?

If some of your PowerPoint Slides use a Layout from a set of Master Layouts that need to be removed from you PowerPoint Presentation Template, you will need to first change the layout of the slide before you can delete the Master Layout. This is because you cannot delete a Slide Master that is being used by one or more slides in your PowerPoint presentation.

Sometimes it will be obvious which slides are using an incorrect Master Layout - for example when the colors and fonts are different from your PowerPoint presentation's theme. However sometimes the theme of both Master Layouts may be similar - for example if your company updated a PowerPoint Template using similar colors and font styles to the previous version, or if someone has used the incorrect PowerPoint Slide Master Layout to begin with and then updated the colors manually to mimic the rest of the presentation's theme.

Step 1: To find which slides are using each Master Layout in PowerPoint, start by going to Slide Master view. Next, hover the cursor over the Slide Master thumbnail. A small dialogue box will appear with the Layout name and the slides that are have this layout applied.

In the example image below, you can see that a Slide Layout name 'Title and Content Layout' is being used by slide #3 in my PowerPoint presentation.

Step 2: To update or change the Layout of a slide, in Normal View select the slide that is based on the Layout from the incorrect Slide Master Layout. For example, Slide #3 in my presentation in the images shown above and below.

Step 3: Next, from the 'Layout' dropdown menu on the top PowerPoint ribbon, choose a Layout from the correct set of PowerPoint Slide Masters. It's generally best to choose a PowerPoint Layout which is similar to the current Layout used for your slide, to avoid unnecessary editing once the Slide Layout is updated.

For example, in the screenshot below I've chosen to change the Layout of slide #3 in my PowerPoint presentation from a 'Title and Content' Layout to the 'Title and Text' Layout in my PowerPoint Template Slide Master.

Step 4: Click on the correct PowerPoint Slide Layout. Your Slide's Theme and Layout will automatically update and will now reflect the correct Slide Master Layout. The PowerPoint theme of the selected Slide Layout will also update the colors and fonts.

Step 5: Once you have updated all PowerPoint Slide Layouts that are based on the duplicate PowerPoint Slide Masters, you can go ahead and delete the Slide Masters. To delete the unwanted Slide Masters (while still in Slide Master View), select the Parent Master slide (i.e the first slide in the group) thumbnail from the left hand side of your Master Slides, then right mouse click and select 'Delete Master' from the dropdown menu.

Is there an easier way to remove Multiple Slide Masters from PowerPoint presentations?

Yes! PPT Productivity has developed a Slide Proofing tool that can automatically detect and remove Multiple Slide Masters from PowerPoint Presentations. Check out Proofing Tools features for PowerPoint via the PPT Productivity free trial.