Lock objects on Master Slides

Question

Hi I was happy to see that PowerPoint finally (after years of waiting) introduced the "Lock" feature. Now I wanted to update our Powerpoint templates and noticed that when I lock objects in the Slide Master on Slide Templates, they are still not locked on the actual slides when I select them out of the Slide Master. My question: Why is this? What is this function supposed to do then? Will this be adjusted in the future?

Answer 1

prety sure there is nosolution currently7 (There really needs to be!)

If you Lock ANY placeholder the lock will not be inherited on the slide.

Even if you lock a placeholder on the slide (which seems to work at first) a simple RESET will usually unlock it.

Answer 2

Thanks for your input. But I don't mean text placeholders. It's clear to me that these need to be editable, because working with them otherwise doesn't make sense. The problem is this: I want to place a placeholder for an image on a master slide. However, according to our corporate design, the image is preceded by a graphic element (a bracket). Now I have noticed that (for whatever reason) all placeholder elements are always placed in the foreground. The only way to place the graphic element ON the image is to make the graphic element (bracket) also a placeholder element. As I said, otherwise the bracket will automatically disappear BEHIND the image on the slide. The problem now is that I want to lock the graphic element (bracket) so that it cannot be moved by the user. But this is not possible, because placeholder elements apparently cannot be locked. Therefore, the whole thing makes no sense to me and I can not use the lock function for it. I hope I could express myself clearly. Does anyone have an idea for a solution?

Answer 3

Thanks for your input. But I don't mean text placeholders. It's clear to me that these need to be editable, because working with them otherwise doesn't make sense. The problem is this: I want to place a placeholder for an image on a master slide. However, according to our corporate design, the image is preceded by a graphic element (a bracket). Now I have noticed that (for whatever reason) all placeholder elements are always placed in the foreground. The only way to place the graphic element ON the image is to make the graphic element (bracket) also a placeholder element. As I said, otherwise the bracket will automatically disappear BEHIND the image on the slide. The problem now is that I want to lock the graphic element (bracket) so that it cannot be moved by the user. But this is not possible, because placeholder elements apparently cannot be locked. Therefore, the whole thing makes no sense to me and I can not use the lock function for it. I hope I could express myself clearly. Does anyone have an idea for a solution?

Answer 4

Slides inherit formatting from slide layouts, but this inheritance does not include the locked properties of the placeholders. But Microsoft's implementation of locking is crude: it simply slaps on every type of shape lock. As Steve mentioned, this would be useless if inherited by a slide as it prevents editing the placeholders on the slides.

Sending Feedback about this is a good idea. For more information about how shape locking works, and how to apply it to Word and Excel as well, please see my article on this subject: OOXML Hacking: Locking Graphics

Answer 5

I'm guessing you're referring to placeholders on the master ... e.g. the Click Here To ... boxes you can fill in on individual slides. If those were to be locked on the slides based on the masters with locked placeholders, you wouldn't be able to edit them, so they'd be kinda useless.

Suggestion: choose File | Feedback or Help | Send Feedback and let the MS devs know that you'd like to be able to lock, say, position and size of placeholders on the master and have slides based on the master respect that setting, while still allowing you to edit the *content* of the placeholders.

That'd be a very valuable feature, I think.