Adding Page Numbers in PowerPoint

Adding slide numbers is a good way to know how many slides are left before reaching the end of the presentation.

In this new Slidesgo School tutorial, you’ll learn how to enable slide numbering step by step.

Adding Slide Numbers

To get started with adding slide numbers to your PowerPoint presentation, follow these steps:

• Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
• Navigate to the Insert tab.

• In the Text group, click on Header & Footer. A new window will open.

• Check “Slide number” to enable it. You’ll see a little box highlighted in black on the preview.

• If you do not wish to apply slide numbering or any other header or footer element to the title slide, make sure to check “Don’t show on title slide”.

• Once you are satisfied with your selections, click Apply to make changes only to the selected slide. If you want to apply the changes to all slides, click Apply to All (note that the title slide will be excluded if you’ve checked “Don’t show on title slide”).

• Now that slide numbers are enabled, you can customize their style to better fit your presentation’s design.

• Be aware that some of our templates may require a different procedure to add slide numbering. We recommend checking the final section of this tutorial for template-specific instructions.

Editing Slide Numbers

If you want to make changes to the slide numbers you just added, follow these steps:

• Launch PowerPoint and open the presentation that contains the slide numbers.
• To edit the style of the slide numbers, you can do so individually for each slide by adjusting the size, color, font, position, and more.

• If you prefer to apply changes to all slide numbers at once, you will need to do this in the Slide Master. Go to the View tab and, in the Master Views group, click on Slide Master.

• Select the slide master (the first one), which serves as the parent slide. Then, click on the slide number box, which contains the text “<#>”.

• Adjust the slide number’s appearance until you are satisfied. If you need to change anything related to typography, you can find the relevant options in the Home tab. For text box modifications, switch to the Shape Format tab. You can also reposition the text box as needed.

• After making your adjustments, return to the Slide Master tab and click on Close Master View. All your changes will be applied across the slides.

• Keep in mind that if you make any adjustments on individual slides later, they will be overridden by any subsequent changes made in the slide master.

Enabling Slide Numbers in Our Templates

To enable slide numbers in our templates, follow these steps:

• Open our template in PowerPoint.
• Go to the View tab and, in the Master Views group, click on Slide Master.

• Select the slide master (the first one), which acts as the parent slide.

• Navigate to the Slide Master tab and, in the Master Layout group, click on Master Layout. A new window will pop up.

• Check the box for “Slide numbers” and click OK. A text box will appear at the bottom-right corner with the text “<#>”.

• For this box to show on all slides, ensure that “Footers” is checked in the Master Layout group on the Slide Master tab. Keep in mind that this box needs to be checked for all layout masters (note that selecting multiple layout masters and checking this box at the same time may lead to unexpected results, as changes will only apply to the current layout master).

• You can now enable slide numbers as explained in the first section of this tutorial.