I've found a solution that works for me on PowerPoint 2013:
- Go to Slide Master View. You should see a master layout and several dependent layouts (indented).
- Find the slide layout that you want to use as default layout for new slides.
- Move it so that it is the third item overall counting the master layout (i.e. the second indented layout underneath the master layout)
- Close Slide Master View.
- Try to add a new slide. It should be in the layout you need.
Please let me know if this works for you.
Based on what you explained:
A.
What you request is not possible in the PowerPoint by simple command somewhere on toolbar because main purpose of the PowerPoint is elsewhere.
B.
It is possible to create macro using VBA programming. Programmatically
- Iterate over all shapes and calculate top, left, bottom and right edge of all (= of entire drawing).
- Move every shape (set its Left and Top properties) so that center of the entire drawing (of group of shapes) will become the center of the slide. Reason: I can see that size change is made in relation to the center of the slide, so center your stuff before slide resizing.
- Set slide size to width and height calculated from values collected in step 1.
Based on your StackOverflow profile, I can see you are a programmer so if you really need this feature, it shouldn't be so difficult for you to put it together and save a lot of time in future on resizing of slides.
Shapes are in collection ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes
(use For Each
... Next
). You can find a ton of examples – keyword is vba, e.g. vba powerpoint resize slide
or vba powerpoint iterate shapes
.
VBA code editor is reachable using Alt+F11. In editor,
object model can be studied using F2 – object inspector. Every object is well-documented, press help icon in object inspector. Store your macro in the presentation and save your file as type PowerPoint macro-enabled presentation or as PowerPoint macro-enabled template. If you get stuck, first search and then feel free to ask at the StackOverflow. VBA coding is relatively trivial. It has couple of oddities (do not use parenthesis on procedure call, only in function call; element indexes in collections start at 1), but they are quite bearable.
Also see commands in Debug menu to boost up your development. You can modify the live code when your program waits (yellow line) and you can use Set next statement command to move your current execution point forward or back, wherever you want. A great time saver.
When in PowerPoint, you can open the macro list using Alt+F8 or from View menu.
Best Answer
Unfortunately, there is (as of PowerPoint 2013) no way to either set the default format for SmartArt or to use the Format Painter to format all shapes within a SmartArt graphic.
But, whenever a question like this arises, VBA macros and add-ins come to the rescue.
The very basic macro below takes the line and fill colour from either your selected shape or the default shape style if you don't select anything and applies it to each shape within the SmartArt graphic. If you don't know how to use a macro, take a look at these examples:
http://i-present.co.uk/category/blog/vba/
It's basic because there are literally hundreds of properties that a user could set such as fill gradients, pictures, textures, line colours, widths, dashes and effects such as reflection, glow etc.
I own a company called GMARK that specialises in PowerPoint add-in development (http://i-present.co.uk) and could create an add-in to do this if there was interest.