Converting Old PowerPoint Presentations to a New Presentation Temp

[AllenC]

I literally have thousands of PowerPoint slides that are using an older
PowerPoint template that I created years ago. Many of these slides have
animations that took hours to setup. I now have a new PowerPoint template
and I want to update all of my older slides to the new template without
losing my animations, content, etc. Is there a fast and easy way to do this
without spending hours doing it? I've been told that I will have to really
invest massive amounts of time to do this but I just can't believe it. There
must be a way to do this easily and quickly.

 

[Michael Koerner]

It really depends on what version your talking about when you say "I literally have thousands of PowerPoint slides" and which version of PowerPoint your using now.

--
Michael Koerner
MS MVP - PowerPoint


I literally have thousands of PowerPoint slides that are using an older
PowerPoint template that I created years ago. Many of these slides have
animations that took hours to setup. I now have a new PowerPoint template
and I want to update all of my older slides to the new template without
losing my animations, content, etc. Is there a fast and easy way to do this
without spending hours doing it? I've been told that I will have to really
invest massive amounts of time to do this but I just can't believe it. There
must be a way to do this easily and quickly.

 

[AllenC]

I'm using PowerPoint 2003 and for years I used one custom PowerPoint template
for my business. Now things have changed and I need to update the slides to
my new template using the same PowerPoint 2003 but I don't know how to do
that especially since many of my older slides have animations that I don't
want to lose or have to spend hours converting to the new template. I know
that there are compatibility issues with PowerPoint 2007 which is why I have
held off using it.

 

[AllenC]

The slides were created in PowerPoint 2000 and 2003. Mostly PowerPoint 2003.
Any new slides that I create are in version 2003.

 

[Paddy]

I'm using PowerPoint 2003 and for years I used one custom PowerPoint
template for my business. Now things have changed and I need to
update the slides to my new template using the same PowerPoint 2003
but I don't know how to do that especially since many of my older
slides have animations that I don't want to lose or have to spend
hours converting to the new template.

1. Using the new template, open a new (blank) presentation (first slide
only).
2. Open existing (old) presentation.
3. In "Normal" view, in left-hand slide pane, Ctrl+A to select all slides
then Ctrl+C to copy all slides.
4. Switch to "new" template presentation.
5. In "Normal" view, in left-hand slide pane, select the "new" presentation
first (and only) slide.
6. Ctrl+V to paste all "old" presentation slides onto "new" presentation
template slides.
7. Do that for all of your squillion "old" presentations.
8. When finished, pour a glass of nice red and bask in the glory of your
genius.

I know that there are
compatibility issues with PowerPoint 2007 which is why I have held
off using it.

As a trial, I just followed above procedure with an "old" PP 2002 PPT, using
PP 2007.

Compatibility is mainly older PP versions not reading 2007 files. If saved
as 97-2003 PPT or PPS, there are no problems.

Paddy