There are a couple of ways to fix this issue. One is to download and install this free Add-in by John Wilson of PowerPoint Alchemy: Bullets Move Up and Down. The VBA code behind this add-in looks something like this:

Sub fixBulletAlignment()
  Dim oDes As Design
  Dim oMast As Master
  Dim L As Long
  Dim oCust As CustomLayout
  Dim oshp As Shape
  For Each oDes In ActivePresentation.Designs
    For Each oCust In oDes.SlideMaster.CustomLayouts
      For Each oshp In oCust.Shapes
        If oshp.Type = msoPlaceholder Then
          Select Case oshp.PlaceholderFormat.Type
          Case Is = ppPlaceholderBody, ppPlaceholderVerticalBody, ppPlaceholderObject
            For L = 1 To oshp.TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs.Count
              With oshp.TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs(L).ParagraphFormat
                .BaseLineAlignment = ppBaselineAlignCenter
              End With
            Next L
          End Select
        End If
      Next oshp
    Next oCust
  Next oDes
  MsgBox "Masters and layouts fixed", vbInformation, "PowerPoint Alchemy"
End Sub

When this runs, it adds an over-ride to the text level definitions on each slide layout that has multi-level text (any layout containing a Content or Text placeholder).

<a:lstStyle>
  <a:lvl1pPr fontAlgn="ctr">
    <a:defRPr/>
  </a:lvl1pPr>
  <a:lvl2pPr fontAlgn="ctr">
    <a:defRPr/>
  </a:lvl2pPr>
  <a:lvl3pPr fontAlgn="ctr">
    <a:defRPr/>
  </a:lvl3pPr>
  <a:lvl4pPr fontAlgn="ctr">
    <a:defRPr/>
  </a:lvl4pPr>
  <a:lvl5pPr fontAlgn="ctr">
    <a:defRPr/>
  </a:lvl5pPr>
</a:lstStyle>

This is adequate for most purposes. With correctly aligned bullets, we now get this effect when we change the bullet size:

There are a couple of downsides to the VBA approach:

• You have to remember to apply it to each presentation or template.
• If you add a new layout, or add a new text or content placeholder to an existing layout, you’ll have to re-run the macro.
• Table text and text box text does not benefit, their bullets will still be wonky.

With XML hacking, we can fix this problem once and never have to think about it again. Start by unzipping a new blank template, then editing ppt\slideMasters\slideMaster1.xml. There are 3 sections to be edited: p:titleStyle (for all title placeholders), p:bodyStyle (for all text or content placeholders) and p:otherStyle (for table text).

The editing is the same for all sections: for each a:lvlXpPr section, where X is the level number, add fontAlgn=”ctr” to the definition. Here’s what it looks like before…

<a:lvl1pPr marL="0" indent="0" algn="l" defTabSz="914400" rtl="0" eaLnBrk="1" latinLnBrk="0" hangingPunct="1">

…and after editing:

<a:lvl1pPr fontAlgn="ctr" marL="0" indent="0" algn="l" defTabSz="914400" rtl="0" eaLnBrk="1" latinLnBrk="0" hangingPunct="1">

There are 19 level definitions in slideMaster1.xml to change. When you’re done that, open ppt\presentation.xml and make the same edit to the 9 levels of the p:defaultTextStyle section that controls formatting for text boxes and notes and handout pages.

When you’re done, rezip the XML files and rename the template blank.potx. Place it so it works as your default template, here’s an article from Steve Rindsberg with the details for each Office version. For PowerPoint 2016 and 2019 for Windows, follow the PowerPoint 2013 directions. For 2019 for Mac, use the Mac 2016 directions: Create your own default presentation.

Now that this is set in your default template, every new file created when PowerPoint opens will have the correct vertical bullet alignment. Please note that in PowerPoint for Windows, if you choose File>New>Blank Presentation, this autogenerates a new file that is not based on your default template. Such a file will have incorrect vertical bullet alignment.

If you haven’t editing XML directly before, please read XML Hacking: An Introduction. MacOS users should also read XML Hacking: Editing in macOS to avoid a couple of Mac-specific XML issues.

We’re going to fix all the color theme problems by searching for XML text and replacing it with corrected values. Professional test editors really shine for this kind of work because of their abilities to do search and replace on multiple folders full of files, saving you hours of work. NotePad++ for Windows and BBEdit for macOS are 2 excellent choices for this work, they both have multi-file search and replace.

If you’re using Windows, unzip the files in a separate folder. On a Mac, open the theme or template in BBEdit.

Start by correcting the color order of the theme file located in ppt\theme\theme1.xml. During design, you may have applied more than one theme and PowerPoint hoards them all. If you have more than one theme file, check the name attribute to ensure you’re changing the one actually used in your deck. (If the theme is called Office Theme, that’s a Microsoft default, you don’t have to update it.) You may also have more than one theme if your presentation contains more than one slide master. Here are before and after examples, showing only the first 4 colors:

<a:clrScheme name="Broken">
  <a:dk1>
    <a:srgbClr val="333333"/>
  </a:dk1>
  <a:lt1>
    <a:srgbClr val="518CA3"/>
  </a:lt1>
  <a:dk2>
    <a:srgbClr val="FFFFFF"/>
  </a:dk2>
  <a:lt2>
    <a:srgbClr val="E4E4E4"/>
  </a:lt2>

This has blue in the lt1 (Light 1) slot and white in the dk2 (Dark 2) spot. One symptom is inserted SmartArt that shows blue text instead of the expected white.

<a:clrScheme name="Repaired">
  <a:dk1>
    <a:srgbClr val="333333"/>
  </a:dk1>
  <a:lt1>
    <a:srgbClr val="FFFFFF"/>
  </a:lt1>
  <a:dk2>
    <a:srgbClr val="518CA3"/>
  </a:dk2>
  <a:lt2>
    <a:srgbClr val="E4E4E4"/>
  </a:lt2>

If a presentation uses Chart Templates, you may also see files in the Theme folder like themeOveride1.xml. This override component allows a chart template to have a color theme different from the presentation into which it’s placed. All chart templates created from a template contain this themeOverride component, which is simply a copy of the main color theme. If the template color theme is bad, then you’ll also have to open all the chart templates and update chart/theme/themeOverride1.xml.

For our simple example, we can skip this step, but for more complex repairs, it may also be necessary to adjust the color map in the slide master. If the presentation was based on a color theme exported from Word or Excel, this is necessary. It’s also often needed for legacy decks that have been imported from PowerPoint 2003 and earlier.

The Slide Master has 2 parts. First is the slide formatting that displays in the Slide Master view of PowerPoint. It’s tagged with <p:cSld>. Immediately after that are parameter storage sections holding references to the slide layouts, title, body and other text formatting, etc. The very first section <p:clrMap is what we’re looking for. The full default color map looks like this:

<p:clrMap bg1="lt1" tx1="dk1" bg2="lt2" tx2="dk2" accent1="accent1" accent2="accent2" accent3="accent3" accent4="accent4" accent5="accent5" accent6="accent6" hlink="hlink" folHlink="folHlink"/>

Compare this to a color map when a Word color theme is imported to PowerPoint:

<p:clrMap bg1="dk1" tx1="lt1" bg2="dk2" tx2="lt2" accent1="accent1" accent2="accent2" accent3="accent3" accent4="accent4" accent5="accent5" accent6="accent6" hlink="hlink" folHlink="folHlink"/>

You can see that the dark colors dk1 and dk2 are mapped to the background instead of the text, while text is formatted with lt1 and lt2. The color theme hasn’t been altered, just the way it is mapped to the presentation elements. There is nothing in the program interface to fix this, you must edit the XML. Mental organization becomes very important when changing both the theme and the color map, you can easily get confused.

The above steps are preparatory to making the actual changes. Now we need to change the color tags attached to all affected elements in the Slide Master(s) and all Slide Layouts and Slides. Let’s use the example of switching the blue and white. The blue was in the lt1 slot, which is mapped in the Slide Master to bk1 by default. The white was in the dk2, mapped to tx2. After switching the color order, we need to change all bk1 color tags to tx2 and all tx2 tags to bk1.

Wherever a tag is used as an attribute, it has straight quotes before and after. Include these in your search terms so you don’t mess up the color map in the Slide Master. It’s simplest to run this on all files in the archive:

Find what: “bk1” – Replace with: “tx22”

Find what: “tx2” – Replace with: “bk1”

Find what: “tx22” – Replace with: “tx2”

That should do it! Zip up the files with the same file ending as the original, if you’re using Windows. On the Mac, just save the file. Test in PowerPoint.

This is the simplest repair scenario. Sometimes you have to move more colors around, particularly if the creator was someone unfamiliar with PowerPoint. Make notes ahead of time, to make sure you’ve got the right colors moving to the right slots. And always work on a copy of the file, not the original! If it gets too complicated, just send it to us, we do this kind of thing all the time.

Next time, I’ll be discussing PowerPoint SuperThemes. Brandwares has cracked the construction of these, so I’ll cover what you need to know.