When you choose either a blank presentation or a presentation design, or when you add a new slide to a presentation you will get a dialog box that asks you to choose from possible slide layouts. If you want to change the layout of your slide at any time, click the Slide Layout button in the Standard toolbar. Masters PowerPoint 97 has Masters for slides, titles, handouts and notes. To edit a master slide, select Master from the View menu and then choose Slide Master, Title Master, Handout Master, or Notes Master . A Master controls the appearance of all the slides or pages in a presentation but does not affect the content.
Masters maintain formatting consistency between all slides in a presentation.
Even if slide layouts vary within the presentation, the formatting stays the same. For example, if you made the title in SlideMaster appear in Italics, the titles in all of your slides would be Italic. Masters also standardize the formatting of date, footer and slide numbering information. Creating a New Slide You can insert a new slide after any slide. To create a new slide, trace to New Slide on the Insert menu or click the New Slide button in the Standard toolbar.