Presentation formatting (Format pane)
The Format pane is a docked task pane that sets watermarks and footers across the whole presentation — controllable per slide type. Open it with the Format button in the PPPTools ribbon, group Tools; it stays docked at the edge while you work on the slide.
The pane has exactly two tabs: Watermark and Footer.
Live preview at the top
Each tab shows a live preview in 16:9 at the top — just like the Venn diagram. It refreshes instantly on every change and fills the placeholders with sample values so you can see the result before applying it. The preview does not replace the slide — nothing is written until you click Apply.
Master switch per tab
Each tab starts with a master switch:
- Watermark management active
- Footer management active
When the switch is off, all fields on the tab are greyed out and Apply removes the elements managed by PPPTools from the slides. When it is on, the elements are set or updated according to your settings. This lets you turn watermarks or footers on and off deck-wide at any time without losing your settings.
Managed elements only
PPPTools only touches the watermarks and footers it created itself (recognised via an invisible marker). Text boxes you added by hand and the classic PowerPoint footer are left untouched.
„Watermark" tab
The watermark is a text box placed on the slides per slide type. One named text box per slide is created, which is updated on the next Apply instead of being duplicated.
Text & placeholders
Type the watermark text freely. Placeholders in double square brackets are replaced with the presentation metadata on apply:
| Placeholder | Content |
|---|---|
[[CLASSIFICATION]] |
Classification (e.g. “Confidential”) |
[[PRESENTATION_TITLE]] |
Presentation title |
[[PRESENTER]] |
Presenter |
[[PROJECTNAME]] |
Project name |
[[STATUS]] |
Status |
[[AUDIENCE]] |
Audience |
These values come from an agenda present in the deck (see below). Without an agenda, the corresponding placeholders stay empty.
Appearance & position
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Colour | Text colour as a hex value (e.g. #C0C0C0). |
| Font size | Font size in points. |
| Rotation | Rotation angle of the text box (e.g. 45° for a diagonal watermark). |
| Transparency | 0 = fully opaque, 100 = invisible. |
| Position (left/top) | Position of the top-left corner in centimetres. |
| Size (width/height) | Size of the text box in centimetres. |
On which slides?
A switch per slide type controls where the watermark appears:
- Title
- Table of contents
- Main divider (divider slide of a main item)
- Sub divider (divider slide of a sub item)
- Content (all remaining content slides)
This lets you, for example, show the classification note only on content slides while leaving the title slide clear.
Licence
The Watermark tab is available in all editions.
„Footer" tab
The footer tab controls the three classic footer zones — footer text, date and slide number — separately per slide type.
Footer text per slide type
For each slide type (title, table of contents, main divider, sub divider, content and hidden slides) you can store a separate footer text — again with the placeholders listed above. Per slide type you decide separately whether footer, date and number appear at all.
Date
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Show date | Enables the date zone. |
| Format | Free date format (e.g. dd.MM.yyyy). |
| per slide type | Set separately on which types the date appears. |
Slide number
The slide number is set through one whole format [[x]] / [[X]] — the current number and the total in a single expression, including leading zeros:
| Placeholder | Content |
|---|---|
[[x]] / [[xx]] / [[xxx]] |
Running slide number, one, two or three digits with leading zeros. |
[[X]] / [[XX]] / [[XXX]] |
Total slide count, one, two or three digits with leading zeros. |
Per slide type you decide whether the number appears and whether the slide is counted — so the title slide can drop out of the count, for example.
Licence
The Footer tab is available from the Standard licence tier.
Interplay with the agenda
The Format pane is a standalone tool, but — if the deck contains an agenda created with the Agenda Master — it reads its classification and metadata as well as the slide type (table of contents, main/sub divider, content) read-only. From this the placeholders are filled and the “per slide type” switches are mapped to the right slides. Without an agenda the pane still works; the metadata placeholders then stay empty and every slide counts as “content”.
Apply & remove
- Apply writes the active tab’s settings to the slides (or removes the managed elements if the master switch is off) and stores them in the presentation.
- Remove deletes the watermarks or footers managed by PPPTools from all slides, regardless of the master switch.
Settings are stored per presentation and reloaded the next time the pane is opened.