Remediating an Existing PowerPoint Deck

Part 3 — Fixing each element

Deck settings — language and title

Symptom in the existing deck: The proofing language is inherited from whoever built the template, and the Title property is blank.

Fix:

1. Select the content on a slide, then Review > Language > Set Proofing Language and set the correct language. Repeat across the deck.
2. Re-tag any passage written in a different language individually.
3. File > Info > Properties, and enter a meaningful Title.

Watch out: PowerPoint has no single “select the whole deck” action for language, so this is per-slide work. Doing it early, while paging through the deck for other reasons, avoids a second pass.

Slide master and theme

Symptom in the existing deck: Body text too small, pale grey text on white, brand colours that fail contrast, and layouts with no title placeholder.

Fix:

1. View > Slide Master and select the top item to affect every layout.
2. Set body text to roughly 18pt minimum and titles proportionally larger.
3. Test each theme text-on-background pairing for 4.5:1, and correct failures via Design > Variants > Colors > Customize Colors so the fix applies deck-wide.
4. Check every layout in the left pane has a title placeholder. Add one via Insert Placeholder where it is missing.
5. Delete or repair layouts that encourage bad practice, such as blank layouts with no title region.
6. Close Master View — slides using those layouts update automatically.

Bulk shortcut: This is the single highest-leverage step. One contrast fix in the theme can clear a contrast failure on every slide at once, where fixing slide by slide would take hours.

Watch out: Slides whose text has been manually recoloured or resized will not inherit the master’s corrected values. Select those and use Home > Reset, or clear the manual formatting, to bring them back under the master’s control.

Slide titles

Symptom in the existing deck: Slides with no title, titles typed into drawn text boxes, or the same title repeated across many slides. Outline View shows blanks or duplicates.

Fix:

1. Work from Outline View, which lists exactly which slides are affected.
2. For a slide with no title: Home > Layout, switch to a layout that includes a title placeholder, then type the title in.
3. For a title in a drawn box: cut the text, apply a layout with a title placeholder, paste the text into the placeholder, then delete the empty box.
4. For duplicate titles: make each one specific — “Results — Q1 revenue” rather than a sixth “Results”.
5. Where a title must not be visible, keep it in the placeholder and hide it via the Reading Order pane, or move the placeholder off the canvas. Do not delete it.
6. Re-check Outline View — every slide should now show a distinct title.

Bulk shortcut: Outline View is also editable. You can type titles directly into it and move down the deck without switching slides, which is considerably faster than working slide by slide.

Watch out: Changing a slide’s layout can reflow existing content. Work through the deck in order and check each slide visually after switching layout.

Layouts and placeholders

Symptom in the existing deck: Content sits in drawn text boxes on Blank layouts. It appears on the slide but not in Outline View, so it carries no structure.

Fix:

1. For each affected slide, choose the built-in layout closest to its actual content via Home > Layout.
2. Cut the text from each drawn box and paste it into the corresponding placeholder using Paste Special > Unformatted Text, so you do not carry the old formatting across.
3. Delete the emptied text boxes.
4. Delete any placeholder left unused, rather than leaving it showing prompt text.
5. Confirm in Outline View that the content now appears.

Bulk shortcut: If the same slide pattern recurs throughout the deck and no built-in layout matches, build one custom layout in the slide master and apply it to all of them at once, rather than improvising per slide.

Watch out: Where a slide’s design genuinely cannot be expressed through placeholders, keeping the shapes is acceptable — but each then needs alt text and an explicit place in the reading order. Treat that as the exception, not the pattern.

Images, charts and objects

Symptom in the existing deck: Missing or meaningless alt text, decorative shapes announced as content, and diagrams grouped into a single unlabelled object.

Fix:

1. Page through the deck and select each image, chart, icon and shape in turn.
2. Right-click > View Alt Text. Write a description of content or purpose, or tick “Mark as decorative” where it carries no information.
3. For charts, select the outer border so the whole object is described, and turn on data labels so values do not depend on reading colour.
4. For any image containing meaningful text, put that text on the slide or in the speaker notes.
5. For grouped diagrams, either ungroup and describe the parts in a sensible reading order, or keep the group and give it one alt text that explains the whole relationship.

Bulk shortcut: The Selection Pane (Home > Arrange > Selection Pane) lists every object on a slide, including ones hidden behind others. Use it to make sure you have not missed anything.

Watch out: Reject Word and PowerPoint’s auto-generated alt text unless you have read it. It is frequently generic, and occasionally describes the image incorrectly.

Reading order

Symptom in the existing deck: Objects are announced in the order they were drawn, which on a rebuilt or heavily edited slide bears no relation to how it reads.

Fix:

1. Open the Reading Order pane (Review > Check Accessibility).
2. For each slide with more than one object, drag items into the correct sequence — title first, then content as it should be read.
3. Untick anything decorative so it is skipped.
4. Confirm with Read Aloud on the slide, not by reading the pane.
5. On older builds with only the Selection Pane, remember the order is inverted — bottom is announced first — and verify by listening.

Watch out: This must come after layout and object work. Any slide you change afterwards needs its reading order re-checked, which is why it sits at stage 7 rather than earlier.

Tables

Symptom in the existing deck: No header row designated, merged cells, or a table used to position content on the slide.

Fix:

1. For each table, click inside it and tick “Header Row” in Table Design > Table Style Options.
2. Confirm the first row holds real column labels. If it holds a merged title row, delete it and move the title into the slide title or a caption.
3. Unmerge cells via Layout > Split Cells where the data allows it.
4. For a layout table, cut the content out into placeholders or shapes and delete the table.
5. Where the data is genuinely complex, summarise the finding on the slide and supply the full table as an accessible spreadsheet or document alongside the deck.

Watch out: That last step is usually the right answer rather than a compromise. PowerPoint’s table semantics are limited, and a large data table on a slide is rarely readable for anyone in the room.

Media and motion

Symptom in the existing deck: Uncaptioned video, media set to autoplay, auto-advancing slides, looping motion, or flashing builds.

Fix:

1. Select each video, go to Playback, and attach a caption file via Insert Captions. Produce a .vtt from a reviewed transcript — do not ship auto-generated captions unchecked.
2. On the same tab, set Start to “When Clicked On”.
3. Transitions tab: untick “After” on every slide so nothing advances automatically. Apply To All covers the deck in one action.
4. Slide Show > Set Up Slide Show, and confirm the deck is not set to loop continuously.
5. Open the Animations pane and remove spin, bounce, zoom and any looping effects. Reduce builds to a simple appear on click, or remove them.
6. Add the transcript to the speaker notes or distribute it with the deck.

Bulk shortcut: Transitions > Apply To All, with “After” unticked, clears auto-advance across the whole deck in one action — one of the few genuinely global fixes available in PowerPoint.

Watch out: Captioning is the item most likely to need external effort and lead time. Identify how many videos need captions during the audit, not during remediation.

Colour, contrast and links

Symptom in the existing deck: Theme colours that fail contrast, text sitting on photographs, colour-only chart legends, and “click here” links.

Fix:

1. Fix what you can in the theme first — see the slide master step — so the remaining work is only the slides that override it.
2. For text over an image, add a solid or heavily darkened overlay shape behind the text, or move the text onto a plain area.
3. For charts, add data labels, and add patterns or markers where series are distinguished only by colour (Format Data Series > Fill > Pattern Fill).
4. For status indicators and colour-coded cells, add a label or symbol alongside the colour.
5. For each link, select it and press Ctrl+K to rewrite the display text so it names the destination.

Watch out: Fixing contrast slide by slide when the cause is the theme is the most common wasted effort in deck remediation. Always check whether the failure is inherited before fixing it locally.