View > Master > Slide master. I am trying to remember how this was in version 2003, it has changed. The thing you want to be careful in 2003, is that if you aren't careful, you will change every single slide, not just most of them.



I would go to Slide master view and then insert a new master and add the placeholder, and whatever else I wanted for every one of these slides. When you leave Slide master view, the new design appears in the Slide Design task pane under Used in this presentation.

Thanks for the reply, Kimberly. I'm hoping this will work, and I've been digging around in slide master view trying to find out how this will help, but I'm having trouble and I may not understand you.

Just to be clear, I've got a thousand slides, each with it's own (different) text, and on each of those slides I want to duplicate the existing text so that the text appears in two (or more) places on the same slide.

I've tried what you suggest, but I can't make it duplicate the text. I may be missing something in what you are saying, can you give me more details? I really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Lenard

To anyone following this, and to visitors from the future, here is how I solved it.

I extracted my existing text from the PowerPoint file to a spreadsheet, using the method suggested here http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/powe...tion_text.html . It works, I used the PDF method with copy/paste, the extract to text method didn't work.

The spreadsheet becomes the new master. Wish I had started with a spreadsheet, it's easier to enter data there anyway.

Then, I bought the PPT Merge tool from http://www.pptools.com/, which gives PowerPoint the same functionality of Words mail merge. I placed an identical field in three locations on my slide, and imported all of the data from the spreadsheet. Works great, and each of my three locations can be formatted independantly.

Thanks all. And good luck, visitors from the future.