Grid Manager
The Grid manager pane creates guides: columns, rows, gutters, centre axes, thirds and the golden ratio — in one go, and with a preview before anything reaches the slide. It never touches slide content and needs no selection.
Open it with the Grid manager button in the PPPTools ribbon, group Tools. It stays docked at the edge while you work on the slide. The neighbouring Work area button leads to the work area settings page — that is where you set up the surface the grid takes as its frame.
Pro feature
The grid generator requires the Pro licence tier. The pane is visible without Pro as well; the licence is checked when you Set grid and when you save presets of your own.
Two buttons sit in the pane's header: Show / hide guides shows or hides all guides (the same as Alt+F9), and Grid guides writes the grid set up below — or takes exactly those lines away again.
The sections below them, from top to bottom: Grid presets · Preview · Grid · Division · Which grid lines · Single lines · Colours · Target · Set grid · Remove guides.
Formerly a tab
Until September 2026 this was the Grid tab of the Work area & grid pane. The content is the same; the work area is now set up in the settings, and this pane does nothing but the grid.
Grid presets
The preset picker sits at the very top. A grid preset remembers the rule behind the grid — kind, frame, division, which lines and their colours.
Two separate preset lists
The single lines further down have a list of their own. A grid preset leaves them untouched, a line preset leaves the grid untouched — each list fills exactly the section it sits in. That way any grid can be combined with any set of lines.
The list comes from three sources, marked accordingly:
| Marker | Origin |
|---|---|
| [Factory] | Shipped with PPPTools: 12 columns, Thirds, Halves, Centimetre grid |
| [Team] | Provided by your team |
| [Mine] | Your own presets |
Where the same name occurs more than once, the more specific level wins: Mine overrides Team, Team overrides Factory.
| Button | Effect |
|---|---|
| Save | Stores the current settings under a name. One of your own names is overwritten after a confirmation; factory and team presets stay untouched — saving then creates a copy of your own. |
| Rename | New name; the old one stays behind as an alias so existing references keep working. |
| Delete | Removes your own preset. Factory and team presets cannot be deleted, but they can be hidden. |
| To team | Makes the preset available to everyone in the team (requires a reachable team store). |
With no preset chosen the settings below still apply — a preset is a starting point, not a requirement.
Preview
Below that, a thumbnail of the slide in the presentation's aspect ratio shows which lines will be created — in the same colours they will have on the slide. It recalculates with every change and saves you from trying things out on the slide.
Two lines underneath put the result in numbers: Guides: {n} vertical · {n} horizontal, the size of the frame, and the width and height of one cell.
Grid
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Kind | Divide the area — the frame is split into columns and rows. Fixed spacing — lines at a constant spacing, however many fit. |
| Axes | Whether vertical, horizontal or both kinds of line are created. The muted side is greyed out: with vertical only, rows, the horizontal gutter and the horizontal step have no effect; with horizontal only, their column counterparts. The values stay put and take effect again as soon as both is selected. |
| Frame | Work area — the presentation's work area applies. Whole slide — the frame is the slide; four margin fields of its own appear below. |
| Unit | Centimetres, points or percent — the unit of every length field in this pane. |
| Margin top / right / bottom / left | Only with frame whole slide: the distance from the slide edge, one row per value. |
Division
Which fields appear here depends on the kind.
Divide the area
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Number of columns | Number of columns, 0 = none |
| Number of rows | Number of rows, 0 = none |
| Gutter between columns | Space between two columns |
| Gutter between rows | Space between two rows |
Fixed spacing
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Vertical spacing | Spacing of the vertical lines |
| Horizontal spacing | Spacing of the horizontal lines |
| Vertical origin | from the left edge, from the frame centre (both ways) or from the slide centre (both ways) |
| Horizontal origin | from the top edge, from the frame centre (both ways) or from the slide centre (both ways) |
“Both ways” means counting outwards from the centre in both directions — the grid stays symmetrical even when it does not come out even.
Which grid lines
These switches apply to the calculated grid only. No tick here has any say over the single lines further down — each of those has a tick of its own.
Every kind of line can be switched on and off individually:
| Switch | Lines |
|---|---|
| Frame edges | The four edges of the frame |
| Column edges / vertical lines | With divide, the left and right edge of every column; with fixed spacing, the vertical step lines |
| Row edges / horizontal lines | The same, horizontally |
| Gutter centres | The centre of every gutter — only with divide the area |
| vertical / horizontal centre axis | The centre of the frame |
| Thirds | The frame divided into thirds |
| Golden ratio | The division at 1 : 1.618 |
If not a single switch is on, the pane says so (“This produces no line at all …”) and writes nothing.
Single lines
Divide and Fixed step always produce even rows. Some lines fit no pattern: the bottom of the header, where the logo stops, the height above which no text may go. That is what the Single lines section is for.
+ Line appends a row. Each row describes exactly one guide:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Check box | Row on or off — a row switched off stays in the list but produces no line |
| Description | What the line is for. For you only; PowerPoint never sees the text. |
| Side | Left, right, top or bottom. Sets the orientation and the edge it is measured from: right 3 cm means 3 cm in from the right slide edge. |
| Distance | The value, in the unit chosen above |
| Colour | This line's own colour. Left empty, the Single lines pot from the Colours section applies. |
| ✕ | Throw the row away |
The rows come in addition to divide or fixed step — having both is the normal case. They go through the same path as every other line: clipped to the slide, merged with lines that coincide, shown in the preview and written by Set grid.
Line preset
Above the rows sits a preset picker of its own. A line preset remembers this list only — the descriptions, sides, distances, colours and which rows are switched on.
It works exactly like the grid presets further up: the same [Factory] · [Team] · [Mine] markers, the same four buttons, the same store. The only difference is what it fills:
| Loading this preset … | … sets | … leaves alone |
|---|---|---|
| Grid preset (top) | kind, frame, division, which grid lines, colours | the list of single lines |
| Line preset (here) | the list of single lines | the entire grid |
That way the same set of special lines — header, logo edge, text boundary — can be laid over any grid without typing it again.
The same name is allowed twice
The two lists sit side by side, so a grid and a set of lines may share a name — both called Proposal, say.
Measured from
Above the rows sits the same Measured from list as on the Work area settings page: slide edge or slide centre. It decides how the Distance column is read and written — PowerPoint itself reports the position of its guides from the slide centre, so if you read a value there, switch to slide centre here and type the number straight across.
It is one setting in two places: change it here and you work in the new reading on the Work area settings page as well. Both read it afresh when they come up — with the other window already open, it shows the change the next time you bring it up or its display refreshes. The lines themselves stay where they are — only the number is written differently.
The grid's own margin fields stay edge-measured
The four Margin fields further up in the Grid section (with frame whole slide) do not follow this list. They are indents, not positions — and they end up inside presets, where a personal reading has no business being.
From the centre for whole chains too
With the Fixed step type, the Origin vertical / horizontal lists cover the same wish for entire chains of lines — via from frame centre or from slide centre (both ways).
Colours
The section sits behind both sources, because it applies to both: to the calculated grid and to the single lines.
By default every line has one colour (field Line colour). The Colour by line kind switch replaces it with five colour pots:
| Pot | Applies to |
|---|---|
| Frame edges | the four frame edges |
| Column and row edges | column/row edges and step lines |
| Gutter centres | the gutter centres |
| Axes, thirds, golden ratio | the three helper divisions |
| Single lines | the rows from Single lines, as far as they carry no colour of their own |
This pays off as soon as many lines are involved: 12 columns with gutters produce 35 vertical guides on their own — colour keeps an edge apart from a gutter centre. PowerPoint colours every guide individually, so the colours sit side by side on the same slide.
Which colour a single line ends up with is decided in this order: the row's own colour → otherwise the Single lines pot → and with Colour by line kind switched off, simply the Line colour.
The colours belong to the grid preset
Both the switch and every pot are saved in the grid preset, not in the line preset. A line preset only remembers the own colours of its rows.
Target
| Setting | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Write to | presentation, master, this slide's layout or all layouts |
| Existing ones | replace — the guides on the target level are cleared first. keep and add — the new grid is added to what is already there. |
An individual slide has no guides of its own — the finest level is the layout. A grid for one particular slide type therefore goes through this slide's layout.
Because the normal view shows presentation, master and layout on top of each other, grids on different levels add up visually. For a clean picture, put everything on one level.
Write to all open presentations
The switch at the bottom of the section writes one click into every file currently open instead of just the front one — handy when a deck is spread over several files and the same grid should apply everywhere.
Each presentation is recalculated. Slide size and work area differ from file to file, so what carries over is the recipe — columns, rows, gutters, target — not the result. A grid worked out for 16:9 therefore still lands in the right places in a 4:3 deck.
You are asked first
With Existing ones set to replace, the click also clears up in windows nobody is looking at — and Ctrl+Z does not bring removed guides back. The pane therefore asks, and tells you how many presentations are involved.
The switch belongs to the single click, not to the grid: it is off again after every start and is not stored in any preset.
Set grid
Set grid writes the lines to the chosen target and reports how many were set, replaced or added. Reset to defaults restores the pane's default settings (the slide is left alone).
No undo
Guides sit outside PowerPoint's undo stack: guides you set or remove are not brought back by Ctrl+Z.
If the pane reports a warning instead of a result, the division does not work out — e.g. “The columns would come out zero or negative” (too many columns or gutters that are too wide) or “The spacing is so small that not all the lines fit”.
Remove guides
The last section cleans up. Remove from offers the same four levels as the target plus everywhere (all levels) — that clears the presentation, the master and every layout at once, and asks first.
Remove only this grid's lines
With Existing ones set to keep and add, you end up with two grids on top of each other — and Remove guides takes both away. The Remove only this grid's lines button instead hits exactly the lines belonging to the values currently set.
It recalculates the definition and looks for the result on the slide: orientation, position and colour all have to match. Where two identical lines sit on top of each other, one disappears.
Lines you moved by hand stay put
A guide you dragged with the mouse afterwards is not found here — it no longer sits where the calculation says. Only Remove from takes such lines away.
The button is free, no Pro licence needed. The Grid guides button in the pane's header does the same thing.
Related pages
- Work area — setting up the surface the grid takes as its frame
- Reference objects — using the work area when aligning