We all are exposed to slides that can be so hazardous to our vision! One look at a slide as the one shown
in Figure 1, and it really doesn't matter if the content is great or not -- because this slide has nothing
understated about it. Such loud slides can ensure that audiences look more at the look of the slide rather than the content. You
might end up with such slides even with no fault of yours, because someone else designed them for you!
Unfortunately you may now have to spend quite some time to reset all the formatting on the slide to make it look more simple and
clean. You may have to change
the position,
size, and
text layout for the placeholders on the slide
too. Fortunately, there is an easy, one-click process to restore the sanity in the slides -- it's called the Reset button. Remember,
the Reset button is your friend.
Figure 1: A slide that looks like a pig with some lip-stick applied
Tip: The Reset button uses the template or Theme as a reference, and resets your placeholders to their default
settings. Thus it only works with text placeholders since they are referenced from
the
Slide Master of the template
or Theme. For that reason, the Reset button does not work with text boxes. Learn about the difference between a text box and a text
placeholder in our
Text Boxes vs. Text
Placeholders tutorial.
To Reset all the changes done on a slide, follow these steps:
- Select the slide which you want to reset, as shown in Figure 1 above. Alternatively, select all, one,
or some of your slides in Slide Sorter view, as
shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Slide selected within Slide Sorter view- Access the Home tab of
the Ribbon, locate the Slides group and click
the Reset button (highlighted in red in Figure 3).
Figure 3: Reset button within the Slides group of Home tab- Alternatively, if you need to reset just the active slide, you can right-click on an empty area of the slide
to bring up the context menu shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4: Reset Slide option within context menu brought up by right-clicking on the slide- Selecting either of these options resets the position, size, and any other formatting of the text placeholders to their
default settings, as specified in the template and Slide Master. Figure 5 shows the same slide that you saw
in Figure 1 after applying Reset Slide -- compare it with Figure 1 and you will find that all the
extra make-up has been removed.
Figure 5: Slide is reset to its default settings- Your slide may not look the same as the slide shown in Figure 5 -- your post-Reset look
depends on the Theme applied to the presentation.
- Save your presentation often.
Tip: Want to reset just the text formatting to deafults? Access
the
Outline pane, and select all
text (
Ctrl+
A). Then press the
Ctrl+
Space shortcut key to reset all
text formatting to the default text attributes. Note that this only resets the text that you can see within
the
Outline pane, and not necessarily all text within your presentation.
