Here's something curious (and handy). When you open the Apply Design Template dialog box, it points to the default location for user templates-that is, the templates you create yourself. There are shortcuts there to the Presentation Designs and the 1033 folders, however, so you can get to those folders easily from there. To test this for yourself, try this:
Click Browse in the Slide Design task pane to open the Apply Design Template dialog box.
From the Apply Design Template dialog box, open the Look in list. Notice it's pointing to your own user template folder. (Mine is C:\Documents and Settings\Faithe Wempen\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates). Notice that there are at least two folders there: 1033 and Presentation Designs.
Now double-click the 1033 folder and then reopen the Look in list. Notice that the path has completely changed.
Here are the template location rules, in a nutshell:
When you create and save your own templates (which you'll learn to do later in this chapter), they're saved by default in C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates where Your Name is the user name with which you are logged onto Windows. This folder also holds shortcuts to the two other template folders described next.
When PowerPoint is deciding which templates to display in the Slide Design task pane, it looks in this folder: C: \Program Files \Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs.
When PowerPoint is deciding which templates to display in the AutoContent Wizard, it looks in this folder: C:\Program Files\ Mi crosoft Office\Templates\1033. However, just placing a template file in that location is not enough to make the AutoContent Wizard see it; you must add it to the AutoContent Wizard, as described later in this chapter.
If you want different templates to appear in different places, it's simply a matter of moving or copying them into one of the three folders on the list in the preceding section.
For example, to narrow down the templates that appear in the Slide Design task pane so you don't have to wade through so many, move some of PowerPoint's default templates out of C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates \Presentation Designs. You can create a Backup folder within it, for example, and then move the unwanted templates into there. You can also delete unwanted templates entirely, but what if you someday want them again? You would have to reinstall PowerPoint (or manually extract them from the Setup CD) to get them back. Therefore, it's better to just move them out of the way.
Another example-if you want the presentation templates (that is, the ones with sample content) to also be available for use as design templates, copy them from C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033 to C:\Program Files\ Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs. Don't move them, because then the AutoContent Wizard would not have them to work with.
By default, the templates you create yourself may not appear in the Slide Design task pane. To make them appear there, move or copy them into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs from wherever you saved them (probably C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\ Application Data\Microsoft\Templates).
| Tip |
If you put your templates in folders in the Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\Presentation Designs folder, each folder will appear as a tab in the New Presentation dialog box. (To open the New Presentation dialog box, click Templates on My Computer in the New Presentation task pane.) Actually, you don't even have to store the templates in that location; you can just put shortcuts to the real locations there. Here's a great article that explains it in more detail: www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/powerpoint_2003_templates.
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