One SDL Document by Document

I previously mentioned the rebranding and SDL Tridion 2013 SP1 updates my team’s applying to the Education materials.

Part of this is using updated templates. My philosophy again is to rely on your company’s experts at handling the bulk of writing standards and document templates. Here’s a quick tip on applying that brand new shiny Marketing PowerPoint template to an existing document.

In PowerPoint go to Design and click the Down Arrow in the Themes section.

Then simply find an open the .potx file to swap out the design.

Layouts that have the same name change automatically, however you may need to do two more things:

1. Change layouts (in the home tab) to the new versions
2. Change aspect (Design > Page Setup > Slide sized for) as needed if switching to a different ratio (e.g. from 4:3 to 16:9). One issue with changing aspect ratios is your images need to be re-scaled. See this older post by Microsoft’s Mary Feil-Jacobs on ways to do this which mostly still apply to current versions of PowerPoint (I like resetting images, but right now we have to update a few images and replace the old ones anyways).

For my slide update to “widescreen” I just needed to change the first drop-down to On-screen Show (16:9).

Assuming you’re applying regular updates to your materials (and time permitting), I think it’s worth taking the latest and greatest from Marketing. Just assume a “get latest” approach and in a few quick projects, you’re on track to representing One Organization, document by document (don’t forget also process by process).

And if you work for SDL, see how these changes fit in the bigger One SDL Experience context from UX Director, Philipp Engel.

As a CMS professional, be sure to apply CMS Principles to your CMS designs, documentation, and slides.