Getting Started Guide

Working with slide masters and styles
A slide master is a slide that is used as the starting point for other slides. It is similar
to a page style in Writer: it controls the basic formatting of all slides based on it. A
slide show can have more than one slide master.
Note
OOo uses three terms for a slide that is used to create other slides:
master slide, slide master, and master page. This book uses the term
slide master, except when describing the user interface.
A slide master has a defined set of characteristics, including the background color,
graphic, or gradient; objects (such as logos, decorative lines, and other graphics) in
the background; headers and footers; placement and size of text frames; and the
formatting of text.
Styles
All of the characteristics of slide masters are controlled by styles. The styles of any
new slide you create are inherited from the slide master from which it was created.
In other words, the styles of the slide master are available and applied to all slides
created from that slide master. Changing a style in a slide master results in changes
to all the slides based on that slide master, but you can modify individual slides
without affecting the slide master.
Slide masters have two types of styles associated with them: presentation styles and
graphic styles. The prepackaged presentation styles can be modified, but new
presentation styles cannot be created. In the case of graphic styles, you can modify
the prepackaged ones and also create new ones.
Presentation styles affect three elements of a slide master: the background,
background objects (such as icons, decorative lines, and text frames), and the text
placed on the slide. Text styles are further divided into Notes, Outline 1 through
Outline 9, Subtitle, and Title. The outline styles are used for the different levels of the
outline to which they belong. For example, Outline 2 is used for the subpoints of
Outline 1, and Outline 3 is used for the subpoints of Outline 2.
Graphic styles affect many of the elements of a slide. Notice that text styles exist in
both the presentation and graphic style selections.
Slide masters
Impress comes with several prepackaged slide masters. They are shown in the
Master Pages section of the Tasks pane. This section has three subsections: Used in
This Presentation, Recently Used, and Available for Use. Click the + sign next to the
name of a subsection to expand it to show thumbnails of the slides, or click the – sign
to collapse the subsection to hide the thumbnails.
Each of the slide masters shown in the Available for Use list is from a template of the
same name. If you have created your own templates, or added templates from other
sources, slide masters from those templates will also appear in this list.
166 Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3.3