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I'd like to have the current year appear on the footer of my slides.
I've been doing this by manually typing the year, but every year, I need to update all my slides. Can I insert the year automatically, just like I can insert the date and have it update automatically?
John Assymptoth
Posted 2013-01-14T17:51:17.820
Reputation: 500
0
There is no easy way to format just the year in a PPT date footer.
This is a workaround. My use case is a copyright stamp in the lower right hand corner of each slide. I have one template with my house style. For new presentations, I edit the template. For existing presentations that you need to update, skip the first step.
For PTT 2010, your templates are in C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates. '..\Templates' may be the word for Templates in your own language. YMMV, Microsoft tends to change its mind about the best place for these with various versions of PPT and Windows. Right click on the template and select Open. Don't doubleclick, you'll open a new blank document from the template. That's not what you want.
Now open the View tab and select 'Master slides', or Microsofts' translation for it ('Diamodel' in Dutch).
In the left pane, you see the master-master, slightly larger than other style masters below it. Click it.
Click anywhere on the slide in the main panel, go to the Insert tab and make a nice text box with your year in it. Place it where it doesn't sit in the way of anything else, like headers or footers. I'm not using any headers or footers, so I put mine in the lower right corner, partially overlapping with the default footer box for slide number.
If you did step 1, save your template and start a new presentation from it. (File -> new -> your bewdiful template.)
Next year, remember to check back here and repeat. I hope I will. Re-invented this wheel at least three times in the last few years.
RolfBly
Posted 2013-01-14T17:51:17.820
Reputation: 109
0
Try this answer. May be that will help you. Here is another similar answer.
You can get this change system-wide through Windows Control Panel, launch "Regional and Language Options", click "Customize this format...", select "Date" tab, and type out "d.M.yy" in "Short date" area, click OK. This should get you 19.06.07 date format in PowerPoint as well.
In your case you can try "yyyy" for your short date.
New Developer
Posted 2013-01-14T17:51:17.820
Reputation: 103
1This doesn't really help me, as I will pass the document around and changing my whole OS date format is not something I'd like to do. – John Assymptoth – 2013-01-15T02:38:46.940
-1
Easier than everyone is making it. Just insert date from the Insert tab on the ribbon use format with the year at the end like mm/dd/yyyy, then just highlight mm/dd/ and set font to one and font color to match your background color. mm/dd/ will disappear and the year will update per normal.
Scott Wallberg
Posted 2013-01-14T17:51:17.820
Reputation: 1
I guess you mean you need to update all your templates? That's a lot less work than updating all your slides. – RolfBly – 2017-03-10T08:43:51.367
4Perhaps you can add an automatically updated date via the Insert tab, then hide the date and month using an opaque rectangle, leaving only the year? I don't know of any other way to specify a custom date format in PowerPoint, and VBA is an ugly solution for this (especially since you'd need a hack to make the PPT auto-execute the macro when the file is opened or slideshow is run). – Karan – 2013-01-15T22:29:32.563
@Karan: That was exactly the solution I first thought. But I still asked, as I assumed this would be a rather common need. Guess I'll have to hide the Month/Day. – John Assymptoth – 2013-01-15T22:44:43.593