Adding slides from one presentation into another and hoping for a button that will automatically format the slides the way needed is just not a feature in PowerPoint. But, the almost magical “Destination vs. Source Formatting” button does exist. For this tutorial, we are going to add slides from the “Blue” presentation (Presentation #1) to the “Purple” presentation (Presentation #2) and keep the blue slides blue (ie. opposite of the last tutorial where the slides updated to the purple template).

Here is our “Blue” presentation (#1):

And here is our “Purple” presentation (#2):

Select the slides from Presentation #1 and copy. Then paste them into Presentation #2. To paste in the new slides, right-click and in the pop-up menu in the “Paste Options” sections, select “KEEP SOURCE FORMATTING:”

With the KEEP SOURCE FORMATTING option the template for the new slides keeps the template that was used in Presentation #1. So the blue slides stay blue.

Behind the scenes what happens is a new Master Slide set is added to the presentation. So if you look in the slide layouts (HOME >> SLIDES section >> LAYOUTS) there are two master slide sets to choose from (Presentation #1 and Presentation #2).

NOTE: If you paste in more slides from the Blue presentation in a new location and select KEEP SOURCE FORMATTING another blue master slide set will be added (which is not optimal).

– Troy @ TLC

Adding slides from one presentation into another and hoping for a button that will automatically format the slides the way needed is just not a feature in PowerPoint. But, the almost magical “Destination vs. Source Formatting” button does exist. For this tutorial, we are going to add slides from the “Blue” presentation (Presentation #1) to the “Purple” presentation (Presentation #2) and make all of the slides the same, so they are all purple.

Here is our “blue” presentation (#1):

And here is our “purple” presentation (#2):

Select the slides from Presentation #1 and copy. The paste them into Presentation #2. To paste in the new slides, right-click and in the pop-up menu in the “Paste Options” sections select “Use Destination Theme:”

With the USE DESTINATION THEME option, the template for the new slides is assigned to the template used on the slide in front of the insert point. So now all of the blue slides are changed to the purple template.

*Note: There is no “magic” button and with this example the text boxes, background, colors used, etc. were all setup correctly using the template formatting (which also means it is a real template). When updating to the new (purple) template all of the master slide formatting carries over just fine. But there are lots of times when things are not based on template formatting and need to be manually updated (ie. no magic format button).

– Troy @ TLC