Text formatting is lost when you save, close, and then reopen your presentation in PowerPoint 2002 or PowerPoint 2003

The text formatting in your presentation may be lost after you save, close, and then reopen your Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 or Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentation.

This problem occurs when the following conditions are true:

• The PowerPoint presentation contains multiple slide masters.
• The placeholder text in a slide master contains one or more formatting changes that do not follow the formatting of the respective slide master. For example, the placeholder text may contain a bulleted list or a font change.

The problem is caused by the way that PowerPoint loads multiple slide masters and by the order that PowerPoint uses to read and apply text properties.

To work around this problem, do one of the following:

• Create a new slide master with the formatting that you want, and then use this new slide master instead of the old one in your PowerPoint presentation.
• Do not use multiple slide masters in your PowerPoint presentation (delete the unused slide masters).

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

A slide master is a slide that stores information about the PowerPoint design template that is applied, including font styles, placeholder sizes and positions, background design, and color schemes.