Home | Products | PowerPoint | PowerPoint Tutorials | Interface & Basics

Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2003 for Windows

Learn how to reuse slides in PowerPoint 2003.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint 2003
OS: Windows XP and Vista

Date Created: October 14th 2010
Last Updated: October 14th 2010

Reusing slides from an existing presentation (or several presentations) is a great way to add some common slides that you end up using in most presentations. I always suggest you to first create and import an outline so that you have a structured presentation in place -- thereafter do use the Reuse slides option to add more slides or even replace existing ones. Finally you can add any new slides that you need to create from scratch.

PowerPoint provides a quick command that locates specific slides, and enables you to add it to the active presentation. While this process works the same way in all versions of PowerPoint, there are small interface changes -- in this tutorial, I'll show you how to reuse slides in PowerPoint 2003 for Windows:

1. Within PowerPoint, open your existing presentation (see Figure 1).
   
   
   Figure 1: PowerPoint 2003
   
   
   Note: Copied slides will always be inserted after the selected slide in the active presentation.



2. Browse to the slide after which you want to import new slides. Then choose the Insert | Slides from Files menu option (see Figure 2).
   
   
   Figure 2: Slides from Files
   
   
3. This will open the Slide Finder dialog box that you can see in Figure 3. Click on the Browse button.
   
   
   Figure 3: Slide Finder dialog box
   
   
4. The Browse dialog box (see Figure 4) lets you select a presentation file on your computer. Select the file you need and click the Open button.
   
   
   Figure 4: Browse dialog box
   
   
5. The selected file will be opened in the Slide Finder dialog box displaying individual slide previews and their corresponding slide titles, as shown in Figure 5.
   
   
   Figure 5: Slides in Slide Finder dialog box
   
   
6. Now you can select slide(s) to insert (see Figure 6) and click the Insert button. Alternatively, if you want to insert all the slides in the presentation, click the Insert All button.
   
   
   Figure 6: Insert slides
   
   
   Note: To retain the slide formatting of the original slide (as in the template), make sure to check the Keep source formatting option located at the bottom left of the Slide Finder dialog box (highlighted in red, refer to Figure 6 above). If you do not check this option, the copied slide(s) will take on the slide formatting using the design template of the new presentation -- which is probably the best thing to do!
   
   
   
7. As shown in Figure 7, the selected slides are added to the new presentation.
   
   
   Figure 7: Added slides
   
   
8. Save the presentation.

See Also:

Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows
Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows
Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2008 for Mac
Reuse Slides in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows