Preserving Slide Masters in PowerPoint 2003 for Windows

Have you ever applied a new Slide Master to existing slides in PowerPoint - and then found that the old Slide Master just disappeared! Poof - how did that happen? The typical answer to that question is your existing Slide Master was not "preserved", and since no slides used it anymore, PowerPoint just decided to clean it up altogether. So if you don't want this to happen again, then you must preserve your Slide Masters.

Follow these steps to preserve Slide Masters in PowerPoint:

1. Open any presentation and choose the View | Master | Slide Master option. This will get you to Slide Master view.
2. 
   Figure 1: Slide Master option within the Master sub-menu of View menu
2. Note that our open presentation, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2 has three Slide Masters.
3. 
   Figure 2: Slide Masters
3. Look carefully besides these Slide Masters - you will notice that two of the three Slide Masters have a pushpin icon placed before them, as marked in red within Figure 3, below. The topmost Slide Master on the other hand has no pushpin icon - this indicates that this Slide Master is not preserved.
4. 
   Figure 3: Pushpin icons placed before Slide Masters
4. To confirm this further, select the thumbnail preview representing your Slide Master and right-click. In the menu that appears, you will find the Preseve Master option, as shown in Figure 4. Notice that the Preserve Master option has a checkmark in front to indicate that this option is turned on. Clicking it again will uncheck the same option, and you will also lose the pushpin icon in front of the Slide Master, as is the case with the topmost thumbnail preview seen in Figure 3.
5. 
   Figure 4: Preserve Master option
Note: All new presentations that you create using PowerPoint's built-in templates have the Slide Master not preserved. Add a new Slide Master and that will be preserved, but your original Slide Master will not be. So make sure you preserve your existing Slide Masters before adding new ones!
5. Make sure all your Slide Masters are preserved unless you want to lose them! Save your presentation often.