What are default templates & themes?

This article is for administrators who manage Drive and Docs editors for an organization. For help managing your own files, go to the Learning Center.

Users can browse all the templates and themes offered in your company's template gallery. You can configure which default templates and themes appear directly in Google Slides, Forms, and Sites for a user, based on the organizational units and groups that the user belongs to. You can add and manage these company templates and themes in the Google Admin console. 

Templates & themes

• You can upload a default template for your whole organization and for specific groups. For details, go to How the organizational structure works.

• When you upload a document to use as a default template or theme, the published version that appears in Slides, Forms, and Sites is a copy of the source document. The source document and the published versions are different documents. If you update the source document, you need to sync it in the Google Admin console so that the changes transfer to the published document and are available to your users. Similarly, if you delete the source document, the published document will not be deleted, and vice-versa. 

Access example

If you publish default templates in more than one organizational unit in a hierarchy, users can see only the files that are in the lowest levels of the organizational units that they are assigned to. 

• For Slides, users can access only a single template from the lowest organizational unit.
• For Forms, users can access themes from up to 5 organizational units.
• For Sites, users can access only a single template from the lowest organizational unit.

Slide template guidelines

• Document types—Only native Google Slides files for templates. Microsoft Office files, encrypted files, or documents that are held in a third-party storage provider are not supported.
• Number of images—Up to 35 images per slide and 35 images per theme.
• Number of slides—Up to 150 slides in your presentation.
• Number of themes—Up to 5 themes in your presentation.
• Multimedia files—No video or audio files in a template.
• Text and shapes—All shapes, text boxes, and tables can have up to 32,768 characters and a font size less than 25,000 pts.
• Linked content—No linked slides, charts, or tables, so you need to unlink them. For details, go to Edit, update, or unlink a chart, table, or slides.
• Layouts—Up to 100 layouts per theme.

Related topics

• Activate organization branding features
• Manage default templates & themes