Most PowerPoint presentations make use of templates that contain color schemes, formatted text, and often graphics. These templates help to give slide presentations a consistent appearance. Instead of having to determine a background color for every slide, you can simply select a template that contains the desired background color.

While templates provide convenience and consistency, there are times when you need to modify a particular slide within a presentation. You may want to remove a background graphic from one slide without changing the background for all of the other slides. So, instead of making the change on the Master slide, you need to make it on the individual slide. Consider the following example:

This template works well for most of the slides within the presentation. However, we want to remove the "arrow" graphic for one slide. We want to insert a starburst in its place.

This slide retains all of the elements of the Master slide (background color and text style/placement), except the arrow.

To change the background graphic in PowerPoint

1. Open a PowerPoint presentation.



2. Navigate to the desired slide or create a new one.



3. First you must omit the background graphic:



• Select Background from the Format menu.



• Select Omit background graphics from master.



• Click Apply.


4. Then, you add the new graphic to the slide:



• From the Insert menu, select Picture > Clip Art or From File.



• Navigate to the desired graphic. Click Insert.