Reset Slides in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Sometimes we come across slides that can be hazardous to our vision! One look at a slide as the one shown in Figure 1, and it really doesn't matter if the content is great or not. The reason why it no longer matters is because such slides have nothing understated about them, and they seem to ensure that audiences get distracted. You might end up with a similar slide for no fault of yours, because someone else prepared them for you!

You now need to eradicate all the formatting on the slide to make it look more simple and clean. You may need to change the position, size, and text layout for the placeholders on the slide too. Fortunately, there is an easy, one-click process to restore some sanity in such slides. It's called the Reset option.

Figure 1: A slide that is hazardous to our vision

To reset all the changes done on a slide in PowerPoint 2016, follow these steps:

1. Select the slide which you want to reset, as shown in Figure 1 above. Alternatively, select all, one, or some of your slides in Slide Sorter view, as shown in Figure 2.
2. 
   Figure 2: Slide selected within the Slide Sorter view
2. Access the Home tab of the Ribbon, locate the Slides group, and click the Reset button (highlighted in red within Figure 3).
3. 
   Figure 3: Reset button within the Slides group of Home tab
4. Alternatively, if you need to reset just the active slide, you can click the same Reset button without selecting any slides. You can also right-click on an empty area of the slide to bring up the contextual menu, and then choose the Reset Slide option, shown highlighted in red within Figure 4.
5. 
   Figure 4: Reset Slide option within the context menu
3. Selecting either of these options resets the position, size, and any other formatting of the text placeholders to their default settings, as specified in the template and Slide Master. Figure 5 shows the same slides that you saw in Figure 2 after applying the Reset option. Compare it with Figure 2 and you will find that all the extra formatting has been removed.
4. 
   Figure 5: Slide is reset to its default settings
5. Your slide may not look the same as the slide shown in Figure 5. Your post-Reset look depends on the Theme applied to the presentation. Do you notice that one of slides still looks horrible even after using the Reset option? To know the reason, take a look at the Reset Backgrounds section, later on this page.
4. Save your presentation often.