Restoring Notes Pages in PowerPoint

Believe it or not, sometimes things go wonky in the world of PowerPoint (gasp!). One particularly frustrating quirk we come across is when the Notes Pages layout gets out of sync. Sometimes the slide, notes and number placeholders change size or move from where you’ve told them to be in the Notes Master. So, we’ve developed a little VBA macro which fixes it for you in a snap.

Learn how to use the Notes Master to print PowerPoint with notes and check out our PowerPoint automation service.

The Notes Master is on the left in the screenshot below. This defines where the three placeholders (slide, notes, slide number) are positioned and what size they should be. However, on the right you can see the Notes Page for one of our slides – it’s not following the master.

Though it’s frustrating, it’s pretty simple to correct. All you need to do is open the Notes Page for your slide by clicking the View tab in PowerPoint followed by Notes View. Once in this view you can right–click on the Notes Page and choose Notes Layout:

This gives you the option to Reapply master, for the current slide:

And hey presto, all fixed:

But did you spot the gargantuan problem??

It resets the CURRENT slide only! Oh dear. Cue hours of tedious work for those huge presentation projects with tens if not hundreds of slides.

Don’t worry, you can wave RSI goodbye because Captain VBA is here to save the day.

If you’ve never used VBA before, check out our getting started article. If you have used VBA in PowerPoint and you know how to throw some VBA at your presentation, here’s our handy macro for fixing wonky Notes Pages:

Just copy paste the VBA below into a code module and run it from PowerPoint by pressing Alt+F8 and double clicking the macro.

Sub RestoreNotesPages()
  Dim oSld As Slide
  Dim oShp As Shape
  Dim lIdx As Long
   
  On Error Resume Next
   
  With ActivePresentation
    For Each oSld In .Slides
      With oSld.NotesPage.Shapes
        ' Delete the objects from the notes page in reverse order
        For lIdx = .Count To 1 Step -1
          ' Make a copy of any existing notes pane text
          If .Item(lIdx).PlaceholderFormat.Type = ppPlaceholderBody Then
            If .Item(lIdx).TextFrame.HasText Then
              .Item(lIdx).TextFrame2.TextRange.Copy
              .Item(lIdx).Delete    ' Delete the text
            End If
          End If
          .Item(lIdx).Delete        ' Delete the placeholder
        Next
         
        DoEvents
         
        ' Recreate the placeholder objects on the notes page
        .AddPlaceholder ppPlaceholderTitle
        .AddPlaceholder(ppPlaceholderBody).TextFrame2.TextRange.Paste
        .AddPlaceholder ppPlaceholderSlideNumber
        
      End With
    Next
  End With
End Sub

So, there you have it! A big automation time saver that lets you get on with far more interesting presentation tasks than the monotony of manually resetting your notes pages, one slide at a time.

What other tasks you ask? Well, why not add sensational slide transitions or a sleek mobile phone media holder to your next deck? For more PowerPoint design ideas, check out the rest of our blog.

Got something extra you’d like PowerPoint to do?

Check out our PowerPoint automation service which provides you with a custom solution to your specific needs.