Applying a Template to PowerPoint presentation

If you want to learn how to apply a template to a PowerPoint presentation to enhance the design of your current presentation then here we will explain how to do it. First, you will need to browse or download a template that you want to use. For example, let’s say that you downloaded one of our free business PPT templates from our site and now you want to apply this template to your existing presentation. Below you can find a screenshot showing this business presentation template for free.

You can open both presentations and arrange them together like in this picture below.

Theme and template are different concepts in Microsoft PowerPoint. While a theme is a configuration of color schemes, fonts and other properties using in a PowerPoint presentation a template is a pattern or blueprint of a slide or group of slides that you save as a .potx file but sometimes also provided as .ppt or .pptx templates – Templates can contain layouts, theme colors, theme fonts, theme effects, background styles, and even content like placeholders so you can easily edit it later. Learn more about the difference here.

Notice the original layout used in the business PPT template is quite basic and it is not prepared for widescreen monitor. But this article will show you how to convert the widescreen template with white background to a 4:3 template with the graphics and colors used in the business PPT template that you downloaded.

Now, you can select all the slides from the original presentation where you want to apply the theme and copy them to the clipboard.

Finally, paste the copied slides into the business.ppt template and you will get a result like follows.

You may need to edit the layout for certain slides, those for example that use the title layout and especially if the new template has new layouts that can be used. You can learn more about how to change layout in PowerPoint.

This approach works well if you already have an existing presentation in PowerPoint and want to apply a theme or template to your slides. However, if you didn’t start yet preparing your presentation content and design, you can start from scratch by download the business template and then editing over it. Then, save the presentation file using File -> Save As to specify a new output name.