Special Edition Using Microsoft® Office XP

Applying and Modifying Designs

PowerPoint designs control the appearance of a presentation. By letting you save, modify, and reuse designs—including dozens of Microsoft-supplied samples—PowerPoint makes it easy to create presentations that are visually appealing and consistent. Consistency is especially important when you want a group of presenters from the same organization to share a common look.

You might think of a presentation design as something Microsoft hired professional designers to create—a set of perfectly tuned and balanced elements that shouldn't be altered by those of us with less-than-perfect artistic skills. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if your audience includes anyone who has ever used PowerPoint, they'll ...