Inserting New Placeholders Within Slide Layouts in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Before we get into how you can add a placeholder within individual slide layouts, let us first explore what a placeholder is. A placeholder is a boilerplate container that you can use to fill in with some sort of content. When you launch PowerPoint, you will see those distinctive boxes that invite you to add some content. Haven't you noticed the "Click to add title" suggestions? All these boxes are placeholders. When selected, these boxes have a dotted border around them, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Part of a new slide showing placeholders with dotted borders

All of PowerPoint's built-in slide layouts except the Blank layout contain placeholders. PowerPoint provides several placeholders that can contain various types of content such as text, tables, charts, pictures, clip art, SmartArt diagrams, or media clips. If you add a new slide based on the Title and Content layout, you'll find two placeholders: one for the slide title and the other for any single content type (see Figure 1, above). Each of the default layouts comprises a collection of various placeholders. If none of the available layouts work for you, you can create your own with custom placeholder(s), as explained in the following steps:

1. Launch PowerPoint. By default, PowerPoint opens a blank presentation. Access the View tab of the Ribbon and click the Slide Master button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.
2. 
   Figure 2: Slide Master button within Master Views group of View tab of the Ribbon
2. This opens the Slide Master view, as shown in Figure 3. In Slide Master view, you'll find that the left pane contains a larger thumbnail on the top, called the Slide Master (highlighted in red within Figure 3), and several smaller slide thumbnails representing individual Slide Layouts (highlighted in blue within Figure 3).
3. 
   Figure 3: Slide Layouts within Slide Master view
3. Insert a new Slide Layout and make sure it is selected. We will now add one or more placeholders to this layout. Optionally, you can follow these same steps to add placeholders to any of the existing Slide Layouts. For this tutorial we have selected a new inserted slide layout, as shown in Figure 4.
4. 
   Figure 4: New Slide Layout selected
4. With the Slide Layout still selected, hover your cursor over the Insert Placeholder button on the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 5. You'll notice that there are two parts of the button. The bottom half (highlighted in blue within Figure 5) is a distinctly different button.
5. 
   Figure 5: Insert Placeholder button
5. Click the bottom half of the Insert Placeholder button to bring up a drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 6.
6. 
   Figure 6: Insert Placeholder drop-down gallery
Note: If you click the top half of the Insert Placeholder button, you will end up selecting your last-used placeholder type.
7. All the placeholder types within the Insert Placeholder drop-down gallery can be populated with the content types explained below:
   

Content

8. A Content placeholder is a combination of seven types of content: text, pictures, charts, tables, SmartArt, media clips, and clip art. This placeholder appears almost like a text placeholder. But it additionally contains a small palette of icons in the center, one for each of the other 6 non-text content types. Note that each content placeholder can hold only one type of content at a time. Figure 1, earlier on this page shows a Content placeholder.

Text

9. For bulleted text.

Picture

10. For a picture.

Chart

11. For a chart.

Table

12. For a table.

SmartArt

13. For a SmartArt diagram.

Media

14. For media files such as audio or video clips.

Clip Art

15. For clip art.
    
6. Choose the placeholder type you want to add, and drag on the slide layout to insert the placeholder. For this tutorial we are selecting the Content placeholder as it provides all the seven content types. As you can see in Figure 7 below, the Content placeholder is inserted within the new slide layout (compare with Figure 4, above).
7. 
   Figure 7: Content Placeholder inserted within the slide layout
7. Now you can insert multiple placeholders to create your customized layout. Figure 8 below shows our layout that contains Content, Picture, and Media placeholders (compare with Figure 7).
8. 
   Figure 8: Picture and Media Placeholders inserted within the slide layout
8. When done, click the Close Master View button on the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon (to locate the the Close Master View button, refer to Figure 3 above). This will get you back to Normal View.
9. Access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout button to bring up the Layout drop-down gallery you see in Figure 9, below. Notice that your new layout shows up here with the name Custom Layout (highlighted in red within Figure 9), ready to be used to create a new slide.
10. 
    Figure 9: Custom Layout added with new placeholders
Note: The new layouts you create are saved as part of the presentation, and are not available in any other presentations you create. Other than adding placeholders to your new slide layouts, you can also change their slide backgrounds.
9. Save your presentation often.