Work Area
The work area is the surface everything else works on: align, distribute, the puzzle and the grid all take it as their frame of reference. You set it up on the Work area settings page. It never touches slide content and therefore needs no selection — unlike the object tools, which always act on what is selected.
Open it with the Work area button in the PPPTools ribbon, group Tools: it opens the settings straight on this page. The same place can be reached through About → Settings → Work area.
The grid — columns, rows, gutters and axes as guides — lives in a pane of its own: the grid manager. Its button sits on the ribbon right next to Work area.
The page has four sections, from top to bottom:
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Work area | Which work area currently applies — and where it comes from |
| Set the work area | Enter, save or remove the four margins |
| Work area templates | Store margins under a name; mark one as the default |
| Show on the slide | Guides and drawn edges |
Formerly a pane of its own
Until September 2026 these settings sat in the Work area tab of the Work area & grid pane. The values are the same; the place is now the settings page, and the second tab became the stand-alone grid manager.
What is the work area?
A slide has fixed dimensions (e.g. 33.87 × 19.05 cm for 16:9). Headers, footers, logos or margins take away part of that. The work area describes the usable remainder — as four distances from the slide edge.
It is the frame for:
- the reference object work area when aligning and distributing
- the puzzle
- the work area frame in the grid manager
Which work area applies right now?
The first section shows four lines: where the current work area comes from, what its margins are (left · right · top · bottom), how large the slide is, and how large the working area is once the margins are taken off — both in centimetres.
Without a work area the two sizes are identical: the whole slide is then the working area.
The levels are searched from top to bottom — the first one that has something stored wins:
| Display | Meaning |
|---|---|
| stored in the presentation | This presentation has its own work area; it travels with the PPTX file. |
| team (locked) | The team administrator set a work area and locked it — it cannot be overridden. |
| default template “…” | The template you marked as default. It applies in every presentation without a work area of its own — and goes into the presentation on first use (see below). |
| team default | A suggestion from the team, used when you have not marked a default template. It too goes into the presentation on first use. |
| not set — the whole slide | No level has anything stored; the whole slide counts as the work area. |
On first use it goes into the file
As long as a presentation has no work area of its own, the default template (or the team default) is only on loan there. It is written into the file once a feature actually uses the work area:
- align and distribute with the reference object work area — from the ribbon or through a keyboard shortcut
- the puzzle, when it takes the work area as its frame
- the grid manager with the work area frame
- the work area guides and draw work area
A short notice then appears at the bottom of the PowerPoint window: “Work area “…” adopted into this presentation.” — once per presentation, because from then on it has its own, and the display reads stored in the presentation. Share the file and the work area goes with it; changing the default template later no longer moves it.
Merely opening or creating a presentation writes nothing — a file does not change just because you looked at it.
Exceptions
- A read-only file gets nothing written. The default still applies there, just not inside the file.
- A locked team work area is not copied into the file — it applies anyway, for as long as the team sets it.
Setting the work area
The second section holds the four values, each on its own row — paired by axis, so the two opposite margins sit next to each other:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Margin left | Distance from the left slide edge |
| Margin right | Distance from the right slide edge |
| Margin top | Distance from the top slide edge — e.g. below the header |
| Margin bottom | Distance from the bottom slide edge — e.g. above the footer |
All values in centimetres.
Measured from
Above them sits the Measured from list with two readings:
| Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Slide edge | The value is the distance from that slide edge. 2 for Margin left means: 2 cm in from the left edge. |
| Slide centre | The value is the distance from the slide centre outwards. 14.9 for Margin left means the same as 2 from the slide edge, on a slide 33.87 cm wide. |
PowerPoint itself reports the position of its guides from the slide centre. If you read a value there and want to enter it here, switch to slide centre and type the number straight across — no mental arithmetic.
Switching only changes display and input. What gets stored is still the distance to the slide edge, and everything that uses the work area — align, distribute, puzzle, grid manager — keeps calculating unchanged. The setting belongs to you, not to the presentation: it stays put across every file.
The same list also sits in the grid manager, in the Single lines section, because it applies there just as much. It is one setting in two places: change it here and you work in the new reading over there as well. Both windows read it afresh when they come up — with the pane already open, it shows the change the next time you bring it up or its display refreshes.
Without a work area you see four zeros
In both readings. Four zeros mean “there is none” here — not “the margins sit exactly at the slide centre”.
Save writes the four values into this presentation — as custom XML inside the PPTX; they are retained when you share the file. For every presentation, the default template applies (see below); the former Applies to choice is therefore gone.
Remove deletes the work area from the presentation again — the next level down then applies, usually the default template. The status line names it, and on the next use it goes back into the file. Setting all four to 0 has the same effect as Remove.
Margins have to leave room
If the four values leave no area at all, nothing is saved and the page reports “These margins leave no area.”
Formerly under Master Settings
Until September 2026 these values were entered in the old task pane under Master Settings → Workarea. The place is new, the values are the same — existing presentations are still read unchanged.
Work area templates
If you keep typing the same margins, store them once as a template. The section sits directly below the margin fields: picking a template fills exactly those fields above it.
The list comes from three sources, marked accordingly:
| Mark | Origin |
|---|---|
| [Factory] | Shipped with PPPTools: Margin 1 cm, Margin 2 cm, Header and footer clear |
| [Team] | Provided by your team |
| [Mine] | Your own templates |
If the same name exists more than once, the more specific level wins: Mine overrides Team, Team overrides Factory.
| Button | Effect |
|---|---|
| As template | Stores the four margins under a name. An existing name of your own is overwritten after a prompt; factory and team templates are left alone — a copy of your own is stored instead. |
| Make default | Marks the selected template as the default template: it applies in every presentation without a work area of its own. There is at most one; the list marks it (default). If the selected template already is the default, the button reads Remove default. |
| Rename | A new name; the old one stays on as an alias so existing references keep working. |
| Delete | Removes your own template. Factory and team templates cannot be deleted, but can be hidden on request. |
| To the team | Makes the template available to everyone in the team (requires a reachable team location). |
Picking a template does not change the slide yet
Picking one only fills the four fields above. It reaches the presentation with Save — otherwise merely browsing the list would move your work area. Until then the status line reads “Template … loaded — not saved yet.”
What a template carries — and what it does not
Only the four margins are stored. Not included: the colour of the lines and objects, and the Measured from reading — those belong to you, not to the template. So if you fetch a template from the team you see it in your reading and keep your own colours. Whether it applies to every presentation is not part of it either — that is decided by Make default, and that belongs to you.
There is no template made of four zeros — four zeros mean remove and are not a work area.
Default template
Marking a template as default means: these margins apply wherever the presentation has none of its own. This replaces the former me (all presentations) setting — instead of four loose values in your settings it is now a named template that you see in the list, can rename and can give to the team.
- Any visible template can be marked — your own, the team's or a factory one.
- Deleting or hiding the default template removes the default; the team default or the whole slide applies again.
- Marking a different template or removing the default does not change any presentation that has already adopted its work area.
From before: “My default”
If you had saved a work area under me (all presentations) before this update, you now find it as the template My default — already marked as default. If a template with exactly the same margins already existed, that one is marked instead, so no twin is created.
Show on the slide
The last section makes the work area visible — in two fundamentally different ways: as guides (visible while you work, never printed) or as drawn objects (real shapes on the slide).
Guides
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Show / hide guides | Shows or hides all guides — the same as Alt+F9 in PowerPoint. |
| Work area guides | Places the four edges of the current work area as guides — or takes them away again. |
Below them you see how many guides there currently are:
Guides: presentation 4 · master 2 · layout 12
PowerPoint keeps three separate collections of guides: one in the presentation, one in the master and one per layout. The normal view shows all three on top of each other — what you see is the sum. An individual slide has no guides of its own; the finest level is the layout.
The lines of the grid are written and removed by the grid manager; this section is only about the four edges of the work area.
Why the second button adds and removes rather than shows and hides
PowerPoint has only one switch for guides — the top one. There is no way to show some guides and hide others. The button below it therefore adds the lines and takes them away again. The caption always says what the next click will do.
Guides carry neither a name nor a marker. To remove them they are recognised by orientation, position and colour: PPPTools recalculates its own definition and takes away exactly the lines that match it. Where two identical lines sit on top of each other, one disappears — the second stays. A line you moved by hand is no longer recognised and stays put.
Line colour
Between the two buttons sits a colour button for the work area guides. They are blue out of the box; set a grid in a similar blue and you can no longer tell the two apart.
The colour belongs to you and stays put across every presentation — it lives in your settings, not in the file.
The colour is more than cosmetics
It is part of how the lines are recognised (see above). So if the lines are already there, changing the colour lays them again in this presentation — the page reports how many. In other files that are not currently open they stay in the old colour; there they have become foreign lines and can only be cleared with Remove guides in the grid manager, or by hand.
Drawing the work area
Below that, Draw work area places the four edges as objects on the current slide.
Guides cannot do this:
- They cannot be set per slide — the finest level is the layout, and most layouts carry many slides.
- They never print and are invisible during a presentation.
What gets drawn is always the work area that currently applies — the same one that align and distribute use, whether its values come from the presentation, the team, your default template or the factory.
The button works in both directions: if the objects are already on the slide, it reads Remove drawn work area and the same click takes them away again. A second click therefore doubles nothing.
They are ordinary objects
The four lines are named Workarea_Help_… and can be moved or deleted like any other object. Locking is not possible — PowerPoint has no locked shapes. They are recognised by name, which is why the button also clears lines from older presentations.
Below the button sits a colour button of its own: Object colour. It is deliberately kept apart from the colour of the work area guides further up — these objects print and have to fit the slide, guides never print. Want both the same? Pick the same colour twice.
Because the objects are recognised by name and not by colour, changing the colour here is harmless: if they are already on the slide, PPPTools recolours them and leaves them where they are.
Formerly under Master Settings
This was the old create guides button. It drew four more objects on every click and had no way back — and it took the values straight from the old fields instead of from the level that applies.
Using the work area as a reference
Once a work area is set, the reference mode work area (
) can be chosen in the ribbon. Align and distribute then use the work area boundaries instead of the slide edge.
A marked default template already counts as set. If there is neither a work area of its own nor a default template or team default, clicking that same button says so and opens this settings page — where you can enter one or mark a template as default.
Licence
The page itself, the guide switches, the work area guides, both colour buttons and drawing the work area are free. Setting the work area requires Standard — that is the Save button and likewise As template, since a template is the work area in a tin; picking a template is free, and so are Remove and simply looking. Also Standard: marking a template as default (removing the default is free) and the reference mode work area on the ribbon. Adopting the work area into the presentation on first use costs nothing in itself. The ribbon button Grid manager is free like Work area — it only opens the pane; the grid generator inside it requires Pro.
Related pages
- Grid manager — placing columns, rows and axes as guides
- Reference objects — using the work area when aligning