Docs & guides.

TypeDeck installs as a native PowerPoint add-in (a .ppam file). Pick your platform:

Download from your Gumroad library. Choose the Windows or macOS ZIP for your computer, then extract it. Each contains the installer and supporting files for that platform.

If Chrome says “This file is dangerous”, or your browser, antivirus or macOS reports malware, stop and email support@typedeck.pro with the warning and filename. Do not override the warning or disable protection. We need to investigate the exact download before calling it a false positive.

A TypeDeck tab now appears in the PowerPoint ribbon.

Then use it

1. Click into a text box, or select some text.
2. Open the TypeDeck tab and pick a preset from the Active dropdown (twelve to choose from — Default, Editorial, Poster… — or one you’ve made).
3. Click a style button — Hero, Title, H1, H2, H3, Body, Body Small, Caption — and font, size, weight, italic, colour, line spacing and letter spacing all apply at once.

Applied to a whole text box, a style keeps the box’s emphasis: bold and italic words stay bold or italic, words in a highlight colour keep it (with Apply colour on, stray greys and near-blacks are unified), text much larger or smaller than the rest — a big number, a footnote — keeps its proportion to the new size, and symbol or icon fonts are never swapped. Everything else takes the style. Select text with the cursor instead and exactly that text is set.

Use Remove Margins to zero a text box’s internal padding (your selection, or every text box in the deck via the dropdown arrow). Open Edit Styles to tune a style — or to capture a finished text box’s whole style straight into a row.

Inherited a messy deck? Click Font Audit (the Audit group): it scans every text box, groups them by their main font — the formatting that covers most of each box — suggests the closest of your eight styles for each group, and restyles them all in one pass, keeping emphasis as above. Tick the groups, pick a target, click Set target, then Apply. Boxes that mix fonts or sizes join the group of their main text (the Boxes column shows, say, 12 (3 mixed)) and are listed underneath with what they mix; untick Restyle the N box(es) with mixed fonts or sizes too to leave them exactly as they are. Since the change can’t be undone with Ctrl+Z, it offers to save a copy first.

Multi-painter, in the ribbon’s Painter group, copies one shape’s size, position or formatting onto as many other shapes as you like.

It works the same on Windows and Mac:

1. Select the shape to copy from.
2. Click Multi-painter — the button stays pressed.
3. Click the shapes to paint: each one is painted as you select it. Drag a marquee or Shift-click to paint several at once.
4. Click Multi-painter again to stop.

If a click doesn’t paint a shape, select it and click Multi-painter: the selection is painted and the painter stays on. Click it again with nothing new selected to stop.

Shortcut: select the source first, Shift-click the shapes to paint, then click Multi-painter once — they’re all painted from the first shape you selected.

What it paints

The button’s dropdown arrow chooses what gets painted, and your choices are remembered between sessions.

• Sticky mode (on by default) keeps painting until you stop; turned off, the painter stops after one paint.
• Size (on) — Width and height (the default), Width only or Height only, under Size options. A picture with a locked aspect ratio gets the exact size with Width and height and scales proportionally with one dimension.
• Position (on) moves the target’s reference point onto the source’s.
• Reference point for size and position — Top left (the default) through Centre to Bottom right. A size change keeps the target’s reference point where it was.
• Format (off) — fill, line, effects and text, like Format Painter; the target keeps its bold and italic words. Table to table it also copies the table style, banding options and cell fills, and rows or columns beyond the source’s repeat its banding.
• Text style only (off) — TypeDeck’s typography (font, size, colour, spacing) from the source’s main text, keeping emphasis; table to table, cell by cell.
• Shape adjustments (off) — the yellow handles, such as a corner radius, when the target has the same adjustments as the source.
• Animations (off) replaces the target’s animation with the source’s.

Most issues come down to macro security or a missing font. If yours isn’t here, email support@typedeck.pro with your OS and PowerPoint version (Help → About PowerPoint), the steps to reproduce, and the preset you were using.

Chrome says “This file is dangerous”

Stop the download or installation and contact support@typedeck.pro with the exact warning, screenshot, TypeDeck version and filename, download date, and any antivirus detection name. Do not choose “Keep anyway”, disable Safe Browsing or antivirus, or unblock the file to get around a threat verdict. Do not share private download links publicly.

A dangerous-file warning differs from an unsigned-publisher prompt. We need to check the exact release and scan results; one clean antivirus scan does not guarantee safety or resolve Chrome’s verdict. See Chrome’s download warning guidance.

Installation, by platform

Common issues (any platform)

Minimum requirements

• PowerPoint 16.0 or later — Office 2016 retail, Microsoft 365 (all channels), Office 2019, 2021, or LTSC 2024.
• Windows 10 22H2+ or macOS Ventura 13.x+.

Tested on

These are the combinations TypeDeck is built and supported for. The Windows rows were run through the manual test plan for 1.3.2; the macOS fixes in 1.3.2 were verified by code review, build-time compilation of the Mac-only branches and packaging checks — macOS reports are especially welcome at support@typedeck.pro.

Should also work on

Build-channel note: setting font weight in the 100–900 range needs a recent PowerPoint build; older builds fall back to bold/regular (weight ≥ 600 → bold). The style still applies.

Not supported

• PowerPoint for the web (no VBA runtime)
• PowerPoint for iPad / iPhone / Android (no VBA runtime)
• PowerPoint Mobile (the Windows Store app)
• PowerPoint 2013 and earlier on Windows
• PowerPoint 2011 and earlier on Mac
• Google Slides, Keynote, Canva, LibreOffice Impress

A preset is a plain-text .ini file describing eight named styles — one bundle per brand, client, or project. Edit presets two ways: from TypeDeck → Edit Styles inside PowerPoint (recommended), or by hand in any text editor.

Tip — capture instead of typing. In Edit Styles, select a text box on the slide and click the ↓ button on a row to lift that box’s complete style (font, weight, size, colour, italic, spacing) straight into the row. The editor floats, so you can capture several boxes into several rows in one session.

Where presets live

• Windows: %APPDATA%\TypeDeck\presets\<name>.ini
• macOS: ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/TypeDeck/presets/<name>.ini

The filename (minus .ini) is the preset name shown in the ribbon dropdown.

File format

[Meta]
PresetName=Default
SchemaVersion=5

[Hero]
DisplayName=Hero
Font=Aptos
Size=56
Weight=700
Italic=0
Color=#1A1A1A
LineSpacing=100
LetterSpacing=0
SpaceBefore=0
SpaceAfter=8

[Title]
DisplayName=Title
Font=Aptos
…

The eight section names — [Hero] [Title] [H1] [H2] [H3] [Body] [BodySmall] [Caption] — are fixed identifiers that link each style to its ribbon button. You change the button label with the DisplayName field, not the section name.

Per-style fields

Gotchas

• Font names must match exactly what your OS reports. When PowerPoint can’t find a font it silently substitutes — no error.
• Weight 100–900 is the modern Office contract; older builds round to bold (≥ 600) or regular.
• LineSpacing is a percent of the line height; SpaceBefore/After are in points.
• Renaming via DisplayName doesn’t rename the file — use Presets… → Rename, or rename the .ini on disk.