Some decks get page numbers the hard way: a text box on each slide with 2, 3, 4 typed in. It looks fine until someone moves slide 7 to the front, and every number after it is wrong. PowerPoint can number slides by itself and keep the cover clean.
TL;DR: on the Insert tab, turn on Slide number, tick Don't show on title slide, then Apply to All.
Steps
- Go to the Insert tab and open the footer options, then choose the slide number option.
- In the panel that opens, switch on Don't show on title slide.
- Click Apply to All. The cover stays clean, and numbering appears from the second slide as 2, 3 and so on.
We checked this in PowerPoint for the web. There, the options opened in a panel on the right side of the window; desktop PowerPoint shows the same choices in a Header & Footer dialog.
Why the automatic number is better
- It renumbers itself when slides are added, removed or reordered.
- It sits in the same place on every slide, because its position comes from the slide layout rather than from wherever someone dropped a text box.
- People reviewing a deck can say "see slide 12" and mean the same slide.
Common mistakes
- Clicking Apply instead of Apply to All (on desktop). Apply only changes the current slide.
- The number doesn't show on some slides. The slide layout may not have a slide number placeholder, or someone deleted it. Checking the layout in Slide Master view usually explains it.
- Wanting the second slide to show "1". Hiding the number on the title slide doesn't shift the count; the second slide is still slide 2. On desktop, the starting number can be changed in the Slide Size settings, but we haven't verified that path in the web version, so check before you promise it to anyone.
- Leftover manual numbers. If old text-box numbers are still on the slides, you'll get two numbers. Delete them first.
A note for people who generate decks
If your decks come out of a script, the cleanest approach is the same as in the UI: put the slide number placeholder on the layouts in your template, and let PowerPoint fill it. Hard-coding numbers into text boxes from code reproduces the exact problem this tip is meant to avoid.
This article was written with the help of AI. The steps were tested in PowerPoint for the web.
