getdeckReusing last project's deck for a new client: a way to keep the old company name from surviving
When you copy an old deck for a new client, the cover gets fixed first and the old name and date survive on later slides. Three places to check, and what the My Templates apply-to-all button in getdeck covers.
Change the repeating fields in one pass, then look the deck over
If you reuse last project's deck for a new client, it is safer not to hunt for the fields slide by slide. Company name, date and presenter show up on many slides with the same value. Change those in one pass, and give the deck one last look before it goes out.
- Change company name, date and presenter in one pass.
- Fill page numbers from the slide order instead of typing them.
- Open the cover, a middle slide and the last slide yourself before sending.
If this sounds familiar
Copying an old deck is routine. What gets missed is rarely the cover, because the company name on the cover is the first thing everyone fixes. Say it is the night before a bid proposal is due. This is a made-up scene. You copied the deck you sent another client last month and changed the cover and the title to the new client. The schedule slide still has the old client's name in small print in the footer, and the date next to the contact details on the last slide is last month's. You also deleted two slides in the middle, so the page numbers now read 5, 6, 9. Right before submitting, you find and fix the three one by one. The time goes into having to search by eye for where an old value survived, not into building the deck. If you do not know how many slides carry a field, it is hard to be sure you changed them all.
The same order helps in PowerPoint
Microsoft's help says to open Find and Replace from the Editing group on the Home tab, enter the text and its replacement, and choose Replace All to change every match at once (Windows and macOS steps, checked 2026-11-12). The same page does not say whether it reaches speaker notes or the slide master. If the old name could be in the notes or the master, open those and check by hand. Dates and page numbers go through the Header & Footer dialog. Microsoft's help says to choose Apply to All to put them on every slide, and to tick Don't show on title slide to keep them off the cover. For the date you can pick between one that updates to the current date each time you open or print, and a fixed one. If you want the submission date to stay put, fixed is the one. If your team already has a good PowerPoint template and manages company name and date in the footer, that is enough.
How it works in getdeck My Templates
When you save a deck as a My Template in getdeck, you can edit the slides' fields in the web editor. The repeating fields get two things. Both are Pro features.
- Next to the company, date and presenter fields there is an "Apply to all slides (N)" button. It copies the value on the current slide into the same field on the other slides, and overwrites what is there. N is the number of other slides that have the field, so you see how many will change before you press it.
- After you apply it, a notice says "Applied to N slides" with an Undo, and one undo puts all N slides back.
- Slides where that field was deleted from the layout are skipped. If the new value is longer than the field's character limit, the notice also says how many slides may run over.
- In the slide list menu, "Number the pages" fills the page number field on slides that have one, in order, as 01, 02 and so on. You can change the start number, so a deck can skip the cover and begin at 2.
What changes when you use it
- You open fewer slides looking for the old company name. Slides with the same field get the same value from one press.
- The count of changed slides is on screen, so you do not have to count whether you got them all.
- Page numbers that skip after you delete or reorder slides are fixed with one press.
When it is not for you
The button only fills fields that share a name. It does not find an old company name inside a text box or image you placed on a slide yourself, or a client name written into a body sentence. The fields it covers are company, date and presenter, and fields that should differ per slide, like titles, have no button. Page numbers are filled in as values, so after you reorder slides you press it again. The final check is still yours. If you already manage company name and page numbers through a PowerPoint master, there is no reason to move.