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I know how to make a powerpoint theme using the color palates, font palates, and slide masters. However, if I build it on a 16:9 aspect ratio slide, but then change the aspect ratio to 4:3, all the graphics get smashed. I'd prefer the slides crop the right side off instead of adjusting the graphics.

Anyone know how to set this up?

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  • I have Office 2010, I haven't used 2013, however I am sure that the settings haven't changed all that much. Anyway, If you go to the Design Tab, on the top left there is a "Page Setup" option. Within this, there is a "Slides sized for:" setting. Is this what you're saying you've already tried? If not, give that a go and see how you get on.
    – James
    Aug 26, 2015 at 10:52

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PowerPoint 2013 introduced a feature called SuperThemes; these can contain several different themes of different aspect ratios. Some of the themes that ship with PPT 2013 are, in fact, SuperThemes. When you change from 4:3 to 16:9, PPT automatically chooses the correct SuperTheme, which has already been adjusted for the new size, without distortion of any shapes on the slides/masters/layouts.

MS hasn't released a tool for creating SuperThemes, unfortunately, so there's no way I know of to create themes that will automatically accommodate aspect ratio changes.

Manually, though, you could do this:

Save a new copy of your existing 16:9 presentation. Let's call it 43. Change it to 4:3 ratio, delete all the slides, make any needed fixes to the slide masters/layouts.

Then go back to the original and one slide at a time, select everything on a slide, copy, switch to the 4:3 presentation, add a new slide of the same layout and paste in the content from the original slide.

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  • So this would essentially give me a theme with two masters for each layout and I'd manually choose the one for my particular slide show?
    – Ryan Strat
    Aug 28, 2015 at 16:57
  • Not exactly, because you can't have two different slide sizes in a single presentation. Instead, you'd be making different presentations, one for each slide size you need. Aug 28, 2015 at 17:10
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There used to be a tool for doing this called SuperThemeFancyUI. I think it was an internal Microsoft tool that was temporarily made public in beta. It's linked here: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2013_release-powerpoint/themes-and-variants-in-powerpoint-2013/7810f691-c19b-411d-bb06-131a93e9b945. Unfortunately the link is now dead and I can't find any reference to the tool anywhere.

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I realize that this is an old thread, but I was just working on it and needed a reminder myself (since I already set this up for my company a few years ago, but needed to do it again recently).

There is no need to use a separate tool, you can make it work using the "Picture fill" function in Powerpoint. Basically you need to:

  1. Edit the picture you want to insert, and adjust the canvas size so it has adequate empty space on the right side (can also add more empty space on the bottom, it'll make it easier in the next steps)
  2. In the Powerpoint template, select View > Slide Master
  3. Insert a normal rectangles where you want the picture, and set border to "none"
  4. Right-click > Format picture > Fill
  5. Select "Picture or texture fill", and choose the picture you want
  6. Check the checkbox "Tile picture as texture"
  7. Change Scale X/Y to 100% (or to another percentage if you need)

The rectangle has to be big enough that it works both in 16:9 and 4:3 scale, since the rectangle size will change when you switch scale. That's why you need to adjust the canvas size on the image file so that the right side of the image will just be white (or transparent), even if the rectangle is wider than the actual image.

PS: If the image needs to be right-aligned, just add the empty space on the left instead, and select "Alignment: Top right" after step 6.

For background pictures you can also check "Tile picture as texture" to make it either tile or be cropped when you switch the scale. You might then have to adjust Scale X/Y manually to make the background image fill out or shrink to the correct size.

Edit: Apparently this causes various issues, amongst others the images will be broken if someone tries to use "compress all images" in their PowerPoint, so it's not actually a very good solution after all. Also some PPT previewing web sites won't display it correctly.

Leaving it for anyone curious, but after testing it out for a while, I do not recommend this solution for actual use.

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