How to add page numbers to your PowerPoint slides to organize your presentation

Once you add page numbers to your PowerPoint slideshow, you can edit where they appear on the slides.
Page numbers are great for helping both you and your audience follow along during a long PowerPoint presentation.
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Putting page numbers in a PowerPoint presentation can help you keep track of where you are when you're presenting. It can also help if you're printing your presentation, or if you're dividing up the work between a few people and want each person to take a few specific slides.

Because it's such a useful detail, adding page numbers to your PowerPoint slides should be easy however, it's a bit more complicated than it should be.

So, if you decide you want to add page numbers to your PowerPoint presentation, here's how to do it the right way. This works for PowerPoint on your Mac or PC.

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How to add page numbers to PowerPoint presentations

1. In PowerPoint, click "View" in the list of options at the top of the window, and then click on "Slide Master."

How to add page numbers in PowerPoint 1 Melanie Weir/Business Insider

2. Click on the parent slide at the very top of the slide menu.

3. In the "Slide Master" tab, click "Master layout" to bring up a dialog box.

How to add page numbers in PowerPoint 2 Melanie Weir/Business Insider

4. In the "Master Layout" placeholders box, make sure you have "Slide Numbers" checked it's the default setting, but it may be turned off for some templates.

How to add page numbers in PowerPoint 3 Melanie Weir/Business Insider

5. Your slide number placeholder will appear with a # symbol in it. Use your cursor to move it to the position you'd like it in it shows up on all of your slides in the same position by default.

How to add page numbers in PowerPoint 4 Melanie Weir/Business Insider

6. Return to the Slide Master tab and click the red 'X' labeled "Close Master View." This will close the Slide Master so you can go back to editing slides individually.

7. Next, go to the "Insert" tab and click "Slide Number," under "Text," to bring up the Header and Footer dialog box.

How to add page numbers in PowerPoint 6 Melanie Weir/Business Insider

8. In the Header and Footer box, check the box next to "Slide Number" to have your numbers show, in the spot you indicated, on your slide.

You can also check the "Don't Show On Title Slide" box if you don't want your title slide to be counted as a numbered page.

9. When you're finished, either click "Apply," to apply the slide number to only the slide you're currently working on, or "Apply to All" to apply slide numbers to all the slides in your presentation.

Note that even if you click Apply to All, slide numbers won't appear on slides for which you've manually removed the slide number placeholder.