How to Add Slide Numbers and Footers in PowerPoint

In this PowerPoint how-to video, Stephy Hogan shows how to add slide numbers and footers. She demonstrates how to customize that info and apply it to just the current slide or across all slides. Lastly, Stephy explains how to fix the footers and page numbers if they don’t show up as well as how to apply them across multiple slide decks.

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Transcript

Hi, I’m Stephy Hogan for CreativePro. In this video, I’ll walk you through how to add page numbers and footers to your PowerPoint slides. Start by going to the Insert tab in the PowerPoint ribbon, and then choose Header and Footer.

This opens a dialog box with three main options, Date and Time, Slide Number, and Footer. To turn them on, check the boxes for what you want to appear on your slides. And from here, you can enter any text you’d like in the footer field.

If you click Apply, instead of Apply to All, it will only put these items on the slide you’ve selected. If you click Apply All, it will put everything on every slide. Like here, we have it on the title slide, and then if we go down, we see the information on all of them, and then we get to the last slide, and nothing is there.

So if you’ve clicked Apply to All, but nothing shows up, don’t worry, it’s a common issue. It usually means that placeholders for those items don’t exist on your slide layout. To check that, go to the View tab and click on Slide Master.

On the left side, we have the title slide, it has all three on the bottom, that one does two, and here you see the slide that doesn’t have the footer items in it. But it’s a really simple fix, just go up to the ribbon in that Slide Master tab, and then come over here to Master Layout, and make sure the Footers checkbox is checked, and now everything is there. So let’s go back to our regular slide, and you’ll see that nothing shows up here.

But it’s also an easy fix, let’s just go back to that Insert menu, and bring Header and Footer up again. Make sure we have Slide Number and Footer checked, which is what we wanted in the first place. Again, I can Apply to All, and it won’t make extra ones on the other slides, it will just make sure everyone has the footer information, but in this case, I only need it on this one, and I will select Just Apply.

Here we go, our Slide Number and our Footer. There are times you’re going to want to customize the format of your footers, and that’s also not difficult. So we’re going to go back to View, Slide Master, and then we can go up to our very top Slide Master right here.

And this is where, if we format these placeholders, then it will trickle down through the rest of the slide layouts. Me, I don’t want the date, I’ll just drag that right off. I prefer to have my footer stuff to start in the left, and I want them to be left aligned, so I go Home, Left Align.

And then for my Slide Number, I’m just going to make it obnoxiously big for fun today. And there, as you go down onto the other slides, you can see that the formatting and positioning has updated there as well. Now, there’s one last thing I want you to be aware of.

You might have to combine slide decks at some point, and they might not have the same numbering options or formats or whatever selected in the footers. The best way to make that an easy transition is to go back to the Insert and the Header and Footer, and then turn the Slide Number and Footer off. Apply that to every slide.

Now, there are no footer items on the slides. That’s when you want to copy and paste in your outside slides after you have everything into this one deck that you want in here. That’s when you go back to Insert, Header and Footer, and turn everything back on.

And that’s everything. Now you know how to add footers and page numbers in PowerPoint, how to fix them if they don’t show up, how to format them using the Slidemaster, and how to manage them across multiple slide decks. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video.

If you did, be sure to give it a like and subscribe to our channel. And for thousands more how-to articles and tutorials, visit our website, creativepro.com, and become a member today. Thanks for learning with us.

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