How to Add Slide Numbers in Microsoft PowerPoint

The Importance of Numbering Your Slides

If you are giving a formal presentation to a large audience, a board of directors, or a university class, adding slide numbers is one of the most important formatting details you can include. Without them, your audience is completely lost in time.

Slide numbers give your audience a sense of progression. More importantly, if you host a Q&A session at the end of your presentation, it is incredibly frustrating for someone to say, “Can you go back to the slide about the Q3 budget?” If you have 60 slides, you will be clicking backwards blindly. However, if your slides are numbered, they can simply say, “Can you go back to Slide 14?”

Unlike Microsoft Word, where page numbers are heavily emphasized in the main menus, PowerPoint tends to hide this essential feature deep within its master settings.

How to Add Slide Numbers to Your Entire Presentation

Adding slide numbers in PowerPoint is a global setting. You do not need to manually type the number “1,” “2,” and “3” onto every single slide.

1. Open your PowerPoint presentation.
2. Look at the ribbon menu at the very top of the screen and click on the Insert tab.
3. In the “Text” section of the ribbon (usually towards the right side), click on the Slide Number button.
4. A small dialogue box called “Header and Footer” will appear.
5. Ensure you are on the Slide tab at the top of the box.
6. Look for the small checkbox labeled Slide number and click it so a tick appears.
7. Optional but highly recommended: Click the checkbox labeled Don’t show on title slide. You rarely want a large “1” appearing on your beautiful opening title screen.
8. Click the Apply to All button at the bottom of the window.

A small number will now automatically appear in the bottom-right corner of every single slide in your presentation. If you delete a slide or rearrange the order, PowerPoint will automatically recalculate the numbers so they always remain sequential.

Why Are My Slide Numbers Not Showing Up?

Sometimes, you follow the exact steps above, you click “Apply to All,” and absolutely nothing happens. The numbers refuse to appear. This is almost always caused by a broken “Slide Master.”

The Slide Master is the hidden architectural blueprint that dictates where text boxes, logos, and page numbers sit on your specific PowerPoint template. If the original designer of your template accidentally deleted the number placeholder from the blueprint, PowerPoint has nowhere to put the numbers.

Here is how to fix a broken template:

1. Click on the View tab in the top ribbon menu.
2. Click on Slide Master. (Your screen will suddenly look very different, showing the raw template designs. Do not panic).
3. In the left-hand thumbnail pane, scroll to the very top and click on the largest slide thumbnail (this is the master blueprint that controls all the smaller layouts below it).
4. Click on the Insert tab again.
5. Click on Header & Footer.
6. Check the Slide number box and click Apply to All.
7. Look at the bottom-right corner of your large master slide. You should now see a small text box containing the symbol <#>. This is the code PowerPoint uses to generate numbers.
8. Click on the Slide Master tab in the ribbon and click the red Close Master View button.

Your slide numbers should now successfully appear throughout your entire presentation.

How to Change the Starting Number

In some specific corporate scenarios, your presentation might be “Part 2” of a larger day-long conference. In this case, you might not want your first slide to start at number 1. You might want it to start at number 45.

1. Click on the Design tab in the top ribbon menu.
2. Look to the far right and click on Slide Size.
3. Select Custom Slide Size… from the dropdown menu.
4. A small dialogue box will appear. Look in the bottom-left corner for a setting labeled Number slides from:.
5. Change the “1” to whatever number you need (e.g., 45).
6. Click OK.

Your presentation will now begin numbering sequentially from that specific digit.