New Presentations

Macabacus lets you create new presentations based on your default template and pre-populated with slides you know you will need, such as a title page. This helps you "hit the ground running" rather than starting new presentations from scratch. To create a new presentation, click the Macabacus > New > New Presentation button.

You can specify which special slides (e.g., title page, legal notices) and native PowerPoint sections Macabacus includes by default in new presentations in the PowerPoint > New Presentations section of the Settings dialog. Macabacus automatically inserts a flysheet (i.e., divider slide) as the first slide in each section. Special slides that can be included in new presentations by default include:

• Front cover
• Title page
• Legal notices
• Contact information
• Back cover

If you want Macabacus to use the default template and pre-populate slides/sections for new presentations created natively in PowerPoint, then check the "Use default template for all new presentations" box in the PowerPoint > Template section of the Settings dialog. With this feature enabled, a new Macabacus-enabled presentation will be created upon (a) starting PowerPoint, (b) keying the native Ctrl+N shortcut, and (c) clicking the native New button in Backstage view, rather than a default presentation with a single blank slide.

Sometimes, you just want to create a "rider"—a short presentation containing only a few slides that you are perhaps contributing to another presentation authored by a colleague. When you click the Macabacus > New > New Slide button, Macabacus creates a new presentation based on the default template and inserts a single slide based on the first content layout in the template.

If you have a presentation that was not created using your Macabacus-enabled template as its foundation, you can apply a Macabacus template to the presentation by selecting the desired template from the Macabacus > New > Apply Template menu. This will add the Slide Master and its custom layouts from your Macabacus template to the presentation. If any existing Slide Masters in the presentation are not preserved, they will be automatically removed along with their layouts. If any are preserved, Macabacus will prompt you to remove them and their layouts. Clicking No at this prompt appends the Slide Master from your Macabacus-enabled template to existing Slide Masters in the presentation, resulting in multiple Slide Masters.

In general, you want to avoid having multiple Slide Masters in your presentations. Multiple Slide Masters will unnecessarily bloat presentations and render some Macabacus presentation automation tools inoperable/ineffective. Although the use of multiple Slide Masters is permissible in PowerPoint, and there are valid use cases for it, we generally consider this poor practice more often resulting from an oversight than intent. If you think your presentation requires multiple Slide Masters, try creating separate Macabacus-enabled templates—one for each Slide Master—and then apply them individually as desired.

_{This documentation refers to the latest Macabacus version. Some features and descriptions of these features may not apply to older versions of Macabacus. Update your Macabacus software to take advantage of the latest features.}