The Notes Master does not work as predictably as the Slide Master in PowerPoint, and you have to reset (sorry, reapply) the Notes Master to individual Notes pages to see some changes you made. Why is that so? That’s mainly because there’s no way to select all Notes Pages in your presentation at the same time.
Even if you go are courageous enough to do this task manually, one Notes Page at a time, you will only see the Reapply master option when you first right-click an empty area within Notes Page view to bring up the contextual menu, as shown in Figure 1, below. You then need to choose the Notes Layout option in this menu, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, to bring up a dialog box of the same name, as shown in Figure 2, below. You then check the Reapply master option, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2. Do the same for forty or a hundred slides, and you may not be too delighted, to say it lightly!
Figure 1: Right-click an empty area within Notes Page view
Figure 2: Reapply Notes Master
Would VBA provide an easier and more elegant solution? Steve Rindsberg of PowerPoint FAQ and PPTools believes you can get this task done is so much less time.
First, you need to know how you can run VBA scripts in PowerPoint, and then use this code. Explore the code a bit though.
Sub ApplyMasterToNotes() ' Modified version of code originally posted to ' msnews.microsoft.com public newsgroups by ' David Foster in May of 1999 Dim ctl As CommandBarControl Dim oSl As Slide ' 700 is the control ID for Layout Set ctl = CommandBars.FindControl(Id:=700) ActiveWindow.ViewType = ppViewNotesPage If (ctl Is Nothing) Then MsgBox "command not available" Exit Sub End If For Each oSl In ActivePresentation.Slides ' go to the current slide ActiveWindow.View.GotoSlide (oSl.SlideIndex) DoEvents ' Bring up the dialog ctl.Execute DoEvents ' send it the needed keystrokes SendKeys "%r{enter}" DoEvents Next End Sub
Once you have placed this code in the VBA editor, close the window to get back to your PowerPoint window. Before you proceed further, it’s a great idea to save your file. Make sure that you save as a PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Presentation with the PPTM file extension. If you save as any of the other file formats, PowerPoint will offer to remove the macros, and then, of course, the code to reapply the Notes Master will not work! See our PowerPoint File Formats page to learn about these file formats.
Then open or switch to the presentation where you need this code, and run the macro. To do so, press the Alt + F8 shortcut key. In the Macro dialog box that appears, next to Macro in: choose All open presentations, as shown in Figure 3, below. Click the ApplyMasterToNotes Macro name, and then click the Run button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3.
Figure 3: Run the ApplyMasterToNotes Macro
We tested this code using PowerPoint 365 for Windows.
You May Also Like: Use VBA in PowerPoint, Even if You Can’t Program for Nuts | Create Spirographs in PowerPoint Programmatically | Resources on PowerPoint Programming and VBA
Steve Rindsberg has been associated with PowerPoint since the product originated more than two decades ago. His PowerPoint FAQ site is a treasure trove of PowerPoint information.
When he’s not updating his site, he’s working on his popular PPTools add-ins for PowerPoint. Steve’s also into a lot of print technology related stuff.
See Also: VBA: Change One Shape to Another in PowerPoint
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