PowerPoint 2016 Notes view "Reapply master" command not working and moving body, and removing and adding back Notes body deleting text

Question

Is anyone else experiencing this?  When I view PowerPoint 2016 (for Windows) slides in Notes Page view and want to reapply the Notes master, it is no longer working.  Yes, I have double-checked my Notes Master:  

 

 Also, I have done this for many years with previous versions of PowerPoint with no problems (except the common wish of macros that go to each page and fix it for you).  But at least manually reapplying the master on each Notes view page has worked.

Currently, if I see the text in the notes section at the bottom with formatting that is not right, and I use Notes Layout… > Reapply master, not only is it not resetting the notes text back to the Notes Master formatting (font and/or line spacing), it is moving the whole notes area (“body”) back to the left with no margin. 

 

Also, if I uncheck Bodyand then put it back (by checking or reapplying master), it deletes my notes text!  This definitely did not used to happen.

If anyone finds a solution, PLEASE let me know!

Answer 1

UPDATE Sept 6, 2018

Sadly this doesn't seem to work on some of my files which have been passed back and forth between Keynote and PowerPoint with many changes to the slide and Notes master. I'm now going to try the ppt alchemy macro (in reply further on in this thread). Some notes pages updated beautifully to the revised template following my procedure below, but because many of the slides have been mashed up from old presentations, I fear my simplistic solution won't work for the majority of my slides. I wish I could figure out a way to paste content into a pristine new file which would eliminate any ties to past templates or themes and apply the new ones.

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I may have finally found the solution to the notes master problem in PowerPoint 2016 for my situation.

I created a clean new file from my clean new template (with notes and slide masters the way I want them). I have gotten to the point that we're now all using the same slide template (that's been a chore). It took awhile so that when I follow this method, there aren't a lot of problems to deal with in slide formatting. If you never create your own slide masters you may not have a problem.

That said, I just experimented by creating my empty file from a potx  template (New from Template command). The template has both slide masters (and theme which includes fonts and colors) and a notes master with slide and note placeholders, font and font size specified.

Then, I opened the deck with the slides I wanted to fix and copied them. DO NOT use Insert Slides From Another Presentation. That DIDN'T work.

In the new file, I paste the slides using DESTINATION theme (click on the paste icon - it's an option). This is a critical step. If you let SOURCE theme stay, all bets are off.

I was actually shocked this worked. I have only spent about 10 minutes testing with a prez of 87 slides, but it seems to work. My new notes master has a smaller slide, I moved and increased the size of the notes box, changed the font, font size, and cross my fingers, it seems to be working. My test changed a lot so I could quickly see if the changes were applied.

Considering how often I have come looking for a solution to this forever, I am really excited that I may have figured a way around all the notes formatting issues that have plagued our repository  of 3,000 slides!!!

Woo hoo!

Barb

Answer 2

Thank you for your response.

It is most upsetting as the command is still in the context menu!

:-/

Answer 3

Hello!

I have finally been able to try all three of your suggestions above and none of them have worked.  Do you by chance have any other suggestions I can try!

We use notes in PowerPoint extensively and I really need to my reapply Notes Master command to work!

Thank you!

MSOldTimer

Answer 4

1. Try repairing your office installation (Quick repair is good enough). Try repairing your Office installation. First try Quick Repair (takes 5 - 10 mins) , if that doesn't help then try Online Repair (Takes more than 30 mins but less than 1 hour in general)

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Repair...

2. Could you try to login to Windows with a new user profile and see whether it solves the problem or not?
3. Sometimes, add-ins can cause problems. To determine, if add-in is a problem start PowerPoint in safe mode and see if problem has gone away.

To start in Safe Mode -

Hold CTRL key and click on application icon and don't release the CTRL key till it asks you for Safe mode confirmation.

If yes, then start application normally and disable add-ins one by one and start application again every time you disable an add-in to determine the culprit add-in.