Create your own AutoContent templates for building presentations

PowerPoint’s AutoContent wizard gives you a head start on setting up a presentation based on various prefab templates. But you can also plug your own presentations into the wizard, making it easy to reuse their design, structure, and content.

The AutoContent Wizard is a great place to start when you’re not sure what a presentation should cover. This wizard creates a new presentation using built-in templates, offering content ideas to help you organize the information you include on each slide.

What you might not know is that you can add an existing presentation to the AutoContent Wizard’s library. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Launch the wizard by choosing New from the File menu.
2. Click the From AutoContent Wizard link in the New Presentation task pane.
3. Click Next in the wizard’s first pane.
4. Choose the most appropriate content template category from the list (Figure A) and click Add.

Figure A

1. Locate the presentation you want to use as a content template and click OK.
2. Proceed through the rest of the wizard’s prompts.

The presentation you added is now available to use as a template when you run the AutoContent Wizard.

Don’t let a good generic presentation go to waste. You’ll still have to customize it to suit your particular purpose, but that’s true of any content template you choose.

Notes: The AutoContent Wizard isn’t available in PowerPoint 2007. Instead, use a themed template. Choose File from the Office menu and select New to get started.

Microsoft offers more free templates.