Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Saving Your Template
When you cre ate a tem plate in PowerPoint, you can save it as a reg ular
PowerPoint presentation or as a Design Template. If you save it as a regular
PowerPoint presentation, you can have your stu dents edit it, and you have to be
sure they choose “Save As” from the File menu to save it un der a new name. If
they choose “Save,” it might overwrite the orig inal file and lose the template.
If you save your template as a De 
sign Template, when students dou -
ble-click on the file to open it, they will be taken to a new presentation that is
based on the template. When they save this file, they will be asked to choose a
new name and lo cation for the presentation, so it will not overwrite the orig inal
template.
Saving Your Template 175

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To save your presentation as a Design Template, you will have to pay atten-
tion to the “Save as type.” If you choose, “Design Template” as your file type, it
will cre ate a .pot file (see Figure 10.2).
Figure 10.2. Choos ing De sign Tem plate As the File Type
If you save a file as a De sign Tem plate, you can edit the template (rather than
a pro ject based on the template) by open ing the project from within PowerPoint.
That is, start PowerPoint and choose “Open” from the File menu to open it.
Once you have cre ated a tem plate, ei ther as a .pot file or as a reg ular
PowerPoint presentation, you might want to set it to be “Read-only.” To do this,
quit out of PowerPoint and click once on the file to select it. If you are in Win -
dows, choose “Properties” from the File menu and check the box labeled
“Read-only.” If you are on a Macintosh, choose “Get Info” from the File menu
and check the box la beled “Locked.” This will prevent the template from be ing
changed accidentally.
The Pick-A-Partner Tem plate Project
In my Multimedia Design in the Classroom class, I encourage students to
form groups to complete their fi nal pro jects. While this could be done in a num -
ber of ways (with or with out technology), I also want to be sure my students are
176 Tem plates

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up to speed on the tra ditional features of PowerPoint at the beginning of class.
To that end, I have them fill in a PowerPoint tem plate. The tem plate gives my
students a chance to brush up on their traditional PowerPoint skills and view the
power of VBA with out needing to know any VBA. In a less technically ori ented
class, a similar project could be used for the same pur poses. If you plan to use
PowerPoint for later pro jects, you can use a pro ject like this one to in troduce
your stu dents to some of the features of PowerPoint.
This project is a twist on a common ex ercise to in troduce PowerPoint in
which stu dents fill in in formation about themselves. In my class, this in forma-
tion is spe cifically re lated to what they might want to do with their fi nal pro jects.
Figure 10.3 shows the slides for the template.