Notes Master View in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac

Each slide in your PowerPoint deck can have some notes associated with it, and these are placed in the Notes Pane area. Do you want to print all these slide notes? Yes, you can. However, very few people realize that you can print these notes in the form of a properly structured Notes Page. This might be among the least used PowerPoint options, but this certainly is among the most useful ones!

Incidentally, even the small number of people who print Notes pages never realize that the look of their printed Notes pages can be modified within the Notes Master. Any change you make within the Notes Master view affects the look within Notes Page view and the layout of printed Notes pages. Do note though that these changes do not influence the appearance of the Notes Pane in Normal view.

You can access the Notes Master view by selecting the View tab of the Ribbon, and then clicking the Notes Master button (highlighted in red in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Notes Master button

This opens the Notes Master view in PowerPoint 2016 for Mac, as you can see in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Notes Master view

The Notes Master contains several placeholders, plus also the background area that can be modified as required. These are all explained below, as marked in Figure 2:

1. The Slide itself
2. The Notes area. These are the same notes that you see in the Notes Pane within Normal view.
3. Header placeholder
4. Date placeholder
5. Footer placeholder
6. Number placeholder
7. Notes Page Background: This is not a placeholder! You can apply a picture background or change the colors as per your company branding. Additionally, you can also place a company logo or any other element within the background area (this is explained in the next section).

You can do the following tasks within the Notes Master:

• Select any placeholder and delete it by pressing Delete ⌫ key on your keyboard.
• Reposition placeholders by dragging them to a new position.
• Resize the placeholders.
• Format placeholders by using the tools on the Ribbon or menus.
• Add pictures, SmartArt, clip art, or any other kind of slide objects that you want to display in the Notes view, or when Notes are printed. Do note that these slide objects (anything you insert other than the placeholders that were already available in the Notes Master) will not be editable for individual slides. Make sure that any individual objects you add are sent behind all the placeholders, to do so, select the object you inserted, then right-click and choose the Send to Back | Send to Back option in the resultant contextual menu, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below.
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  Figure 3: Send to Back option

Make the changes as required, and choose any of these options to get back to Normal view:

1. Access the Notes Master tab on the Ribbon (highlighted in blue within Figure 2, shown earlier on this page), and click the Close Master View button (highlighted in red within Figure 2, shown earlier on this page).
2. Access the View tab of the Ribbon, and click the Normal button.
3. You can also click the Normal button located on the Status Bar (highlighted in green within Figure 2, shown earlier on this page).