I don't blame you for being confused, Epinn, because it is indeed confusing.
I'm not sure I can explain it well, but I'll give it a shot.
Design templates are the "holder" for a collection of slide masters, and
slide masters are what your slides depend on for their formatting. Each
individual slide master (or combined slide master and title slide master)
can have a background (a picture or a color or a texture or a gradient or a
pattern) and a variety of color schemes to choose from. The slide master
will also have placeholders, the formatting of which determine the way text
on the slide is formatted if it's typed into a placeholder.
When you apply a design template to a slide, it inherits these
characteristics. But you can go in and tweak anything you wish. This is what
you're doing when you go in and use Format-->Background and change it to a
plain color. In fact, go to Format|Background. Notice that option in the
lower left corner? It says "omit background graphics from master." If you
don't check it, you'll get a new background color on the slide, but the
graphics (the logos, autoshapes, etc.) will still show on your slide. If you
do check it, then you'll get a blank background with the new color (or
picture or texture or gradient or pattern) you specified.
Based on your descriptions below, I suspect that you have that option
checked. For example, template X (dark background with vase of yellow
flowers) might have been created by going to View|Slide Master and placing a
picture on top of the master slide (which has a neon yellow background).
When you change your slide to that template, but you have "omit graphics
from master," then the image doesn't show up and you're left with the neon
yellow background color.
Either that, or the template wasn't created properly in the first place.
People often don't understand that they have to place graphical elements on
the slide master when creating a template, so they place the picture (or
whatever) on a regular slide and don't understand why it's not showing up
when they apply the template to different slides. Geetesh has good info here
on creating templates:
http://www.indezine.com/products/pow...pcreatemp.html And Sonia has
good info here:
http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorial...ate/index.html
Also, you don't have to do that middle step of formatting the slide
background to black before applying a different template to a slide.
--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]
http://www.echosvoice.com
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/
PPTLive! Sept 17-20, 2006
http://www.pptlive.com
"Epinn" <(E-Mail Removed)_SPAM> wrote in message
news:6A61F8FE-5D2F-46FA-B9D4-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I am totally confused about format>background (black) and applying design
> templates. Can someone help me understand what takes precedence - format
> >
> background or design template?
>
> (A) I applied default design template, then I did format background
> (black)
> and applied a design template (X) which has a dark background with a vase
> of
> yellow flowers on the bottom left corner. All I got was a plain neon
> yellow
> slide, no vase nor flowers. Black + black = yellow? The flowers were
> yellow
> but the vase wasn't.
>
> (B) I applied default design template, then I applied a design template
> (Y)
> which has a white background and three green apples on the bottom left
> corner, then I did format > background (black), then I applied design
> template (X) which has a dark background with a vase of yellow flowers.
> This
> time I got a plain slide with a lighter black (compared to the black color
> I
> used for format > background). Does the white background of the apple
> template (Y) neutralize the black I used for format > background?
>
> I am not concerned about mixing colors. I wonder why I lost all patterns
> in
> (A) and (B). I really like to know the relationship between format >
> background (black) and applying templates. How do they affect each other?
> When I apply a new template, it overwrites the old one, right? When I did
> format > background (black) in between applying the two templates, it
> acted
> differently. Format > background (black) seems to have different effects
> on
> different design templates - sometimes it hides the patterns while
> sometimes
> it just changes the background to black.
>
> Can someone help please?
>
> Thanks.
>