Background image (2003)

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I haven’t used powerpoint for many years since switching my profession to graphic designer, but a situation arose yesterday at work that has left me puzzled. I was asked to prepare an image for use as a background to company powerpoint slides, which consists of a semitransparent photo of the company’s head office building. Then the senior secretary used this image to make a master background and sent it to all the junior secretaries to use. Two of them came to me yesterday (the senior sec is still on vacation) and asked if I could make the BG image ‘paler’ i.e. increase its transparency, as they were finding that text added over the top didn’t show up well enough. So I made a new version of the image that was much more transparent, but when they tried to change the BG image, could not select the image at all in the master slide. I recall the senior sec saying at the time she made the slide that she was not going to put the image in a master slide but somehow was going to set it as a background so the file size would not be as big. Trouble is, I don’t know how she did it or how to access the image so I can update it. If anyone can understand what I am talking about, can you please tell me how to change the BG image?

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I’ve just done a bit more reading and it appears I may be confusing master slides with templates. So what has probably been created is a template, and it is probably not able to be changed. However, to resolve the problem I assume I must make a new template with the new image ?

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I think there are two ways to insert a background image. Inserting or pasting into the Slide Master is the easiest. However, the other is to change the background itself. I discovered this when I used the Photo album feature. Try this: open the Slide Master, right-click an empty area, choose Background, then in the drop-down, Fill Effects, then the picture tab. Is the missing picture there?

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I will check this when I get back to work tomorrow, but I suspect it may just be easier to create a new template rather than change the existing one. But thanks for the suggestion.

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My thoughts too…. if you cannot select the image – then it’s on the “background”.

You can get to this from a powerpoint menu…
format menu > background > click the drop down triangle > fill effects > picture .. etc

Cheers

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I understand that the image is in a background i.e. I know it’s not part of the actual slide. What I don’t understand is how to replace it. It seems I must create a new template.

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if you create a presentation using the template

then do this

format menu > background > click the drop down triangle > fill effects > picture .. etc

you should see the “background image”

If you replace the image with a new one – then it will update the background.

Then all you need to do is save the file as a template (.pot)

file menu > save as > change the filetype to ‘template’

Cheers

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Thanks. I will try this out tomorrow and see if it all works.

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How do you delete an image once it is on the background – I know I can replace it but I have a user who wants to delete it.

Thanks

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Select Format | Background… again.
Click the dropdown arrow.
Select a color from the eight-color palette.
Click “Apply to All”.
The picture will be removed and replaced by a solid color fill.

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Thank you – I did find that however the color that they used is not in the recently used color choice. They have a different shade of blue. When I click apply to all – the color does not match. They will have to decide if they want to pick another image or adjust the color accordingly. I guess this means they cannot adjust the side of the image unless they change the image itself in photoshop?

Thanks for your help

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I don’t know what you mean by adjusting the side of the image, but PowerPoint is not an image editor.

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Sorry – I meant the size. For some reason they used a background image on the master title page. Then they put a few clipart images on the slide itself. They are able to move all the images (resize, select and delete, etc) except for one of the images. I was able to figure out it was a background image but I could not figure out how to just delete without replacing it. I am assuming they picked this color a while ago because it is not in the most recently used top eight so when I apply a color, it does not match the rest of the slides.
Sorry this sounds confusing.
Melanie

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If the 8 color palette does not contain the desired color, you can select any other color you like.

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