Hey speed demons.
This is Taylor with a six reasons why your PowerPoint designer might not be
working and If you missed my last video,
PowerPoint designer is a great fast way Design tab, Design ideas,
to generate new slide background ideas for your slides.
So notice with just a few clicks I can come up with a bunch of different ideas.
And in my other video I show you how to break out these background elements of
your slide that you can use on your slide templates.
So just check out my other video up top.
But this video is about why your PowerPoint designer might not be working.
And the very first reason why it might not be working is you don't have an
office 365 subscription or the latest version of PowerPoint,
which at this point is PowerPoint 2016 so if you don't have that,
you can't use it.
And this might be a good reason why you might want to upgrade your version of
PowerPoint so you can take advantage of this cool feature.
And the second reason it might not be working is you might not have access to
the Internet. All right?
This does not work offline like a lot of the new PowerPoint subscription
features. Like for example, if I come into my slide, I will delete the ink,
right? Design Tab, design ideas. This is all generating,
if I scroll down to the bottom, all right, online PowerPoint services.
Just like if I closed design ideas, if I right click,
change graphic,
all of these icons that are now in the new versions of PowerPoint,
this again is pinging an online database. So if you're not online,
you cannot work with or insert these different icons or use these different cool
design ideas. So that's another reason why designer might not be working for you.
Reason number two. Now a third reason,
which isn't so apparent at first is it might be because you have mixed shapes on
your slides. Notice with just a single picture design ideas,
you get a bunch of different ideas.
But if I just take a rectangle and I add it to my slide,
I immediately lose all of those design ideas.
So designer does not work with mixed shapes, which can be a rectangle,
a line, a textbox, ink, a chart and a picture won't work, et Cetera.
So just delete the extra elements on your slide or take the picture that you
want to create a background for. And again,
I show you how to break out all of this stuff in the back of my other video.
Just take it to a new blank slide and that should make your designer work again.
The next reason that your designer might not be working.
Reason number four is what I call the six one one pictures table chart rule.
So designer works with six pictures up to six pictures.
Notice it's working here. Control Z to undo. If I duplicate the tiger,
I immediately have too many images. So it works with up to six pictures.
It works with one chart. So if I here have a chart here, again,
designer will give me different design ideas.
But if I duplicate the Chart Control d to duplicate,
as of right now of the filming of this video designer does not work with two
charts. So you're stuck with um, working with one chart with designer.
And the same is true if I hit page down with your tables. And again,
the designer will give you some ideas for ways to work with your tables.
But again, if you duplicate it,
control d to duplicate one of the best PowerPoint shortcuts ever, all right,
you're going to lose all of your different design ideas. All right?
So that's reason number four, why designer might not be working.
Another not so intuitive reason why designer might not be working as you might
be working with a custom slide or a custom PowerPoint template.
So designer doesn't work with everything yet.
Notice here I have a title and two content layer slide. So designer,
normally if you come to the home tab, layout drop down just as a heads up.
It works best or typically works with title slides, title and content slides,
section slides and blank slides.
So if you have a slide that it's not working for,
my recommendation is to take the images or the pieces that you want to create a
new design idea for Control C to copy them,
hit Control N on your keyboard for new presentation and Control V to paste those
in and that should allow you to,
as long as you're in a blank default PowerPoint presentation should kick
designer back off. Now this is a title of designer.
If you come to a different layout style, again,
something that you should explore when you're looking for new ideas for your
slide, it will give you some different options. And again,
I show you how to break out these individual pieces, not the pictures, but the um,
background elements and my other video if you want to check that out.
So I'm just gonna close out of this and I'm not going to save it.
So that is another reason, all right, reason number five,
why designer won't be working.
You're working with a custom slide or a custom template.
And what you should just do is take the elements that you want to create that
custom designer background with, um,
to a new default slide or a blank slide.
The last reason that designer might not be working for you,
you might not have it automatically set up to pop up.
So if you just come to the PowerPoint options,
and I'll do this for you for a second. If you come to general,
you're looking for this PowerPoint designer, um, checkbox,
this will make sure that as you are designing your slides or adding a picture or
a table or a chart, if designer has some ideas for you, it'll knock those out.
So within PowerPoint to find that, simply come to the file tab,
come to options, it's going to be in the general options.
And then you have the PowerPoint designer automatically show or don't show, um,
depends on what you're doing. Um,
if you're building lots of Fullscreen visual images for your slides,
I recommend turning this off because it will drive you crazy as you're
stretching,
stamping and bending your pictures out into a full screen visual image,
which you can check out more details on how to do that in the description box
below.
But that is six reasons why your PowerPoint designer might not be working,
if you need more help using designer,
I highly recommend checking out my other video.
If you are new to our channel and want to keep up to date on our latest
PowerPoint hack trickery, so PowerPoint hacks,
tips and tricks to help get you to happy hour.
Make sure you subscribe here on Youtube in the lower right hand corner.
If you're just looking for PowerPoint resources to help get you to happy hour,
like pdf cheat sheets, icon bundles and all that jazz,
just look for that and all the free training directly in the description box
below this video. This is Taylor from nuts and bolts speed training,
and I'll see you at happy hour.