A Microsoft PowerPoint template provides the background designs for our PowerPoint presentations. They differ from Microsoft PowerPoint themes, which have coordinating colors and patterns that give your presentation a professional, designer-like feel that you can customize. Microsoft PowerPoint Templates, though, are blueprints of a slide or group of slides that contain layouts, theme colors, content, and even effects. You can make your own templates to store, reuse, and share. There are also hundreds of free templates for PowerPoint and other Microsoft Office programs on the web that one can apply to his or her presentations.

Some of the examples of the templates available online include agendas, slides with content, expense reports, contracts, award certificates, business cards, calendars, diagrams, flyers, gift certificates, envelopes, resumes, letters, greetings cards, newsletters, and receipts, just to name a few. Some websites that contain free Microsoft PowerPoint templates are templateswise.com, powerpointstyles.com, mytemplatesshop.com, soniacoleman.com, and investintech.com.

A template can come pre-stocked with goodies such as content that’s subject -specific. For instance, a template can include words that are reminiscent of an achievement certificate, or with a football word with a picture of a football. Another thing Microsoft PowerPoint templates can feature that’s subject-specific is background formatting, which includes pictures, texture, etc. Other goodies include color, fonts and effects. This includes things such as 3-D, lines, and shadow effects within letters. Lastly, Microsoft PowerPoint templates contain placeholder fields, as to mark generic areas in your presentation. For example, one would type “name of mother” or “date of wedding” to hold the place for future reference when entering content.

Microsoft PowerPoint templates come in as many variations as there are stars in the sky. Put your creativity to use and utilize all Microsoft PowerPoint has to offer.