How many slide masters do you have in your PowerPoint template? How many should you have? And is it one of those things I should even care about? Learn the answers to all those questions in more.
Our team 
Jamie Garroch
Principal technical consultant
Describe what you do at BrightCarbon
I help presentation designers be more productive in PowerPoint through the design of add-ins, delivery of training, and speaking at events.
Kids
Two teenagers for my sins, Connor and Kaitlyn. All three of us supported by my incredible wife, Becky. She’s my rock.
Pets
Dougal the Labradoodle, Lol and Dan the cats.
Drinks
I’m Scottish, so a really good single cask single malt, sipped slowly next to an open log fire. Followed by lots of coffee the next day.
Degrees
Centigrade or Fahrenheit? As a Brit living in the US, I’m very confused!
B. Eng. Communications Engineering from Plymouth.
3 words that describe me
Fancy dress costumes.
Couldn't do my job without
Passion, PowerPoint, perseverance.
Hidden skill
Making stuff. I designed and built my own home office from scratch.
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Tell me more!Recent articles by Jamie Garroch
05th Dec 2025
Alternatives to Reuse Slides in PowerPoint
Reuse Slides is a PowerPoint feature that will be phased out by 1 January 2026. If you're a fan, read on to discover what Microsoft might replace it with, and two alternatives to Reuse Slides to get you using your on-brand, pre-approved content quickly and easily across your whole organisation
18th Sep 2025
Social Media Canvases for PowerPoint
- PowerPoint design / PowerPoint productivity
- Comments: 22
For years, PowerPoint has been synonymous with boardroom presentations and academic lectures. Its default 16:9 slide ratio is tuned for projection screens, not LinkedIn grids or TikTok thumbnails. But what if the same tool that powers your pitch decks could also become your go-to design app for social media content?…
- PowerPoint design
- Comments: 1
Placeholders in PowerPoint form part of a layout and keep content in the right place on a slide. But sometimes, you want the names you see in the Selection Pane in the slide to follow what you set in the master. We're going to unravel a bit of PowerPoint history and find a solution to this conundrum in the process.
10th Oct 2024
Smart PowerPoint add-ins for smart designers
PowerPoint is an incredibly powerful app for creating presentations, printed documents, interactive kiosk shows, videos and so much more. But like any other piece of software, it has its limits. That’s where add-ins come in to play. Like your smartphone, you can customise PowerPoint with new apps, bringing it new…
27th Sep 2024
How to remove the background from an image in PowerPoint
Though there are lots of ways photos can be edited, one of the most common things our clients want to do with an image is to isolate the subject by removing the background. There are an increasing number of ways to do this, some using clever AI. But which is the best? Let’s find out!
