Adding date field on PowerPoint slide master

Information

By default PowerPoint doesn’t have a date field on slides, but it’s pretty straight forward to add one. We’ll cover that first, but then we’ll cover what to do if you have deleted the date box from your slide master and want to add it back so that your slide master has a date that shows layouts and therefore on all slides. This is something we came across and it wasn’t as straight forward as you’d think.

Solution

To add the date to all slides in presentation:

1. Click the Insert tab
2. Choose Header and Footer from the text group
3. Tick Date and Time
4. If you want to just insert a date and always keep it, choose Fixed, but if you want the date to update whenever you run or print the presentation, choose update automatically
5. Click Apply to all
   
   

If you have removed the date field from the slide master and layouts but want to get it back, or just want to make the date show on all slides without using headers or footers:

1. Click the View tab
2. Choose Slide Master from the master views group

Although you can use the master layout button to add the date field back to the slide master, it won’t automatically apply to all the child layouts. The workaround to this is to insert the date in to a placeholder.

1. You cannot insert placeholders to the master slide, therefore select any child slide layout
   
2. Click the Slide Master tab
3. Choose the drop down arrow from Insert Placeholder
4. Select Text
   
5. Draw the placeholder box on your slide by dragging your mouse
6. Delete the default text that appears in the placeholder
7. Click the Insert tab
8. Click Date from the Text group
9. In the date and time options, choose the style you want, if you want the date to update ech time you open or print the presentation, tick update automatically, then click OK
   
10. This will insert the date and time in to your Slide layout. You can now cut the placeholder box by right clicking the border of it
11. Now choose the Slide master at the top of the list on the left
12. Paste the placeholder and position it where you want it, you can also change the style of the text and box.
13. Close the Slide Master by choosing Close Master view from the Slider Master tab
14. Your date will now appear on all slides

Tips

At step 6, speed up removing the text by clicking inside the box and then pressing Ctrl+A then pressing delete.