Placeholder prompt text in templates

How the text is hidden

Layouts and masters define placeholders — the boxes a slide fills in. A placeholder's own text is prompt text, the "Click to edit Master title style" line, and PowerPoint replaces it with the slide's content wherever the layout is used. It is never painted on any slide, and it is arbitrary text that anyone can edit in Slide Master view.

Why a model still reads it

The layout, master, notes master and handout master parts are text-bearing parts of the package like any other. A reader that walks the whole file picks up their runs with nothing to distinguish prompt text from slide text.

What we do about it

The parser reads ppt/slideLayouts/, ppt/slideMasters/, ppt/notesMasters/ and ppt/handoutMasters/. A shape in one of those parts counts as a placeholder when a p:ph element sits inside it, and a placeholder's runs get the hidden-attr reason; a NON-placeholder shape in a layout or master does render on every slide using it and is left alone. The rule requires PPTX, the hidden-attr reason and a body block role. Severity informational and flagged, because ordinary template boilerplate lives in exactly this place — R-5a still escalates prompt text that is instruction-shaped, and the finding withdraws certified either way. visibilityOf maps hidden-attr to editing-only.

How often it fires

81.7% of 120 real Zenodo conference decks (corpus-zenodopptx as re-fetched 2026-08-23), measured 2026-08-24.

This is an alert-volume number and nothing else. It says how often the alarm sounds on documents as found — not how often it is right, and not whether what it found was harmless. Documents as found may themselves carry concealment. Read it against the population named above rather than as a property of documents in general.