How do you lock elements in a Powerpoint page so they cant be moved?

I added it as well. Lets see how it goes

Lock format on presentation objects, and allow seamless auto formatting on paste

Aha.  Somebody's done the job for us:

https://powerpoint.uservoice.com/forums/288949-powerpoint-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/12849894-lock-placeholder-and-other-objects-to-prevent-modi

Been there. Voted for that.

>> wouldn't it be so cool if i could have a slide where the size is locked, the font inside the box is defined, and locked, indentation is defined, and when i dump text, then it simply shows up formatted according to the slide?

I couldn't agree more.  But the two of us agreeing here won't move MS Mountain.  As has been suggested, it's important to make a very precise case for what you want on the Mac and Windows desktop sections of https://powerpoint.uservoice.com/ if you haven't already, or if you have, post a link to your request here so that others can upvote it.  I'll be first in line.

I truly think truly the point is missed. Whereas the products as a whole is quite sophisticated (tens of thousands of features), the fact is that IMO (and other people) basic things don't work.

I work for a large company where we already have dedicated master slides, macros, dedicated fonts etc, but the reality is that expecting all ICs to do the work right (checking fonts, graphics) is NOT the best use of their time. We rather have ENG experts, or strategists worry about their materials rather than PPT... but lets face it the cleanliness of the slides does matter. Here is a quick scenario... someone from China sends you excel data that you need to quickly paste into a slide. first depending on how you paste (there is tons of ways), then the format may change altogether, maybe the font will change, but not the font size. Maybe the paragraph will retain features, maybe it wont. Typically we waste tons of hours copying into notepad to remove "some" formatting and then paste to PPT., Likewise, depending on how accurate your clicking is, then you may accidentally lose the alignment of a couple of boxes.. now to fix that you have to google the solution (cuz lets face it google has way more info that MS KB anytime), an Again, point i was making is that

wouldn't it be so cool if i could have a slide where the size is locked, the font inside the box is defined, and locked, indentation is defined, and when i dump text, then it simply shows up formatted according to the slide?

Every presentation would now look professional, clean, not to mention that you wont need to squint depending on who did the slides.. (again lets face it that people do slides in their laptops, but present on a projector.....)

just ranting at this point