Where is my Powerpoint template located?

Question

I need to create a Powerpoint presentation based on our official template. I should be able to choose between a German and an English template. However, I have 3 templates; two templates are German and one is English. I cannot distinguish the two German templates, because they look the same and have an identical name.

The official Powerpoint template directory is published via group policies. I looked up that directory (a network share) and there are only 2 templates: one German and one English.

I then used Search Everything to see whether I have such a file on my local hard disk: there is none. (I'm running the tool as administrator)

How do I find out which item is the official one, located in the folder that's published via group policies? And how do I remove the other one?

Answer 1

You can use Process Monitor and set a filter for Process Name, contains, Powerpnt. This will record the activities of Powerpoint. Navigate to File/New and wait until the three entries are shown.

Then search for the name of the template and you'll find a Registry key access in

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint\Recent Templates\

Close Powerpoint, then delete the entries Item x and Item Metadata x. restart Powerpoint and the recent files should be gone.

You'll also notice that there aren't no entries any longer. The official templates do appear one section lower. So: don't use the ones at the top, they are just the recent files. Your official templates are here: