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

While it is not possible to lock positions in PowerPoint it is very easy to make an Office Theme that adjusts fonts and placeholder positions and sets colors for an entire presentation in a single click. 

If you're not familiar with Themes (.thmx) files then I think you should take the time to learn about them. They may be just what you need.

To make an Office theme, in a new, blank presentation switch to Master Slide view. Set the page size and format the slide master's background. Go to the Format menu and choose Theme Colors. Set the colors as desired. Then, on the slide master use Command-A to select all the elements at once and apply the font family you want.

If you want to add/remove/edit slide layouts, do that now.

When you're ready to save everything as a theme, click the Themes button on the Slide Master tab of the Ribbon and choose Save Current Theme.

Return to Normal View and your theme will now show up in the RIbbon when you click on Themes,

Distribute the .thmx file and save it in the same location on each workstation. When you want to enforce the theme simply apply it.

As a bonus, theme fonts and colors also become available in Word and Excel. When a Theme is applied in all Office apps the colors and fonts chosen apply to many ingredients such as charts, Excel tables, WordArt and SmartArt.

When our teams use PPT, our information needs to look the same regardless of the author (within our  own team). The people we present to have visibility to the work from 2, 3, or 4 of us, and thus when one comes in with content on 4:3 format, and the next one comes in with the same content on 16:9, and the other one has a different color for certain box, or when someone else copy and pasted their favorite font things go horribly wrong. Not to mention the other comment when someone puts a picture\snip to a page, and now EVERYTHING has to be re size\removed. Net, there are many reasons why i would like to have\control key elements of the design of the page. Having format\colors...etc break when you copy and paste or add pictures is not acceptable.

PPT maybe a small portion of MS, but IMO this is a pretty basic functionality of PPT. Apple is successful because they have 10 times that work right as opposed to 101 things that are either not working right, user does not even know they exist, it takes google to find the answer (much like this thread)

Let nobody get offended, but we spend too much time realigning, format, boxes, colors where we should focus on content

Please do read Jim Gordon's post above and follow the link he provided (and I've copied below)

This forum is for user-to-user support.  MS folks sometimes check on threads here but it's not intended to be, and isn't, a direct shout to MS' ear.

Uservoice is a good way to let MS know what we want and how many of us want it.  You can request features, vote on features that have already been requested and apply more than one vote to the features you REALLY want.

The most up-voted feature requests are the ones most likely to get implemented.

http://powerpoint.uservoice.com/forums/288925-powerpoint-for-mac

Yes I also backed away from Shapelock. Too bad MS can't prove simple locking functions with PP Like I can do with Excel or Adobe.

I turn the PP into pngs and them reload to a new PP to protect copyright of graphics is one work around since I can not lock the files. I spend way too much time sending borders back to work on other graphic placements. Very tedious. I think that it would be great if I could right click a graphic to "Stay Put" and it would not move and it would not be in the chain of graphics that need to be sent back in order to click the graphic you do want to move. Aaaargh.