How to create an Impress (OpenOffice.org) Template

You want to use Impress, but can't find any good templates? If you've got mad skilz, put them to use and create your own template. But how? I'll explain here (since the OOo docs don't really explain it in one coherent chunk), it's really easy.

• Create a new blank presentation
• Set the background. Format->Page... will bring up a popup. Click on the Background tab. From the Fill dropdown choose one. A popup will ask if you want "Background settings for all pages?". Click yes.
• Gradient sidebar. Gradients seem to be popular now for backgrounds. Do you want a gradient other than the few choices listed (of which only the top one looks ok)? The Background tab on the Page popup leads one to believe that those are the only choices. But this is not so. If you want to define your own gradient, click on Format->Area... (intuitive eh?). On the area page is a Gradients tab. Click "Add...", and give your gradient a name. Tweak it till you get the gradient you want. The name of your new gradient should now appear in the list on Background tab for Format->Page...
• Fonts. What you need to do is add some text sections (title/normal text/outline) to your template and then format them. To format them is somewhat counterintuitive as you don't use the normal styling mechanisms, you actually modify the "style" of the Master Page (press F11 to view the styles). So click on a layout found in the right (I used the one with a title bar and an outline in one page). The for each text area click it until you get the "I" cursor. Then right click and choose "Edit Style...". That will bring up a popup, with a title of what you are stying. (ie if I edit the main text area, the popup is named "Subtitle" (See image below. The others I worry about are "Outline 1", and "Title"). From that popup you specify the style for the text type. I'm going to leave the font as the default "Arial", but I'm going to click on "Font Effects" and select the "Shadow" checkbox. I'm also going to change the "Font color" to white. You need to do this for every box (the title, normal text and outline text) that you want to change the font of. Type some text and see how it will look with your new style. Change as necessary using the "Edit Style..." right click menu, not the normal styling buttons! Since the slide only has a title and an outline, we need to add another slide so we can set the "normal" text. Add a slide with the title and text. and adjust the text appropriately.
• Save as a template. Click "File->Save As...". Change filter to "ODF Presentation Template (.otp)"

Here's an screenshot while making my template, illustrating how to style text:

From my grokking it appears to be impossible to apply a template to an existing presentation from within Impress itself. If you want to muck around with zip/xml it's pretty easy to do manually (copy the templates' style.xml and any Pictures into your presentation). Perhaps I'll write a command line program to do this (since I support it my dev version of rst2odp)See update

Hope this helps with the lack of documentation for this. Send feedback/suggestions. I'm looking forward to seeing some nice templates.

Update - I found this nice little Impress User Guide pdf, (other OOo guides are also available here). On page 25 of said guide it shows how to apply a "Slide Master", which is similar to a template. But they aren't quite the same. If you install a template, it's not available as a slide master. There are also 7 sentences in the guide about creating templates on page 39.

tags: template  howto  create  impress  ooo  powerpoint  

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