Where apps hide your files

Finding your PowerPoint templates and themes

Updated 2026-10-28 · 5 min read

Your PowerPoint templates and saved themes are in a shared Office folder inside ~/Library/Group Containers, hidden from normal searches. Here is the exact path, what each subfolder holds and how to copy it to a new Mac.

The location

PowerPoint, Word and Excel for Mac share one user-content folder inside the Office group container. Your own templates and themes live in subfolders of it:

~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content.localized/Templates.localized
~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content.localized/Themes.localized

UBF8T346G9 is Microsoft's team identifier and is the same on every Mac. The .localized endings are real: Finder hides them and shows plain Templates and Themes, but Terminal needs the full names. On the Mac used for this guide, User Content.localized holds these folders:

Folder	What goes in it
Templates.localized	Template files (.potx for PowerPoint, .dotx and .dotm for Word, .xltx for Excel)
Themes.localized	Saved themes (.thmx), with a Theme Colors folder inside
Chart Templates.localized	Chart templates
Startup.localized	Per-app startup folders named Excel, PowerPoint and Word
Add-Ins.localized, Citations.localized, Document Elements.localized, Proofing Tools.localized, Style Sets.localized	Other shared Office content (add-ins, citations, building blocks, proofing tools, style sets)

Microsoft Office apps are not installed on that Mac, only the folders they left behind, so the layout above is what a past install created. Your own Mac may have fewer folders, because Office creates some of them only when you first use a feature.

Open it

In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder (⇧⌘G) and paste the first path above. The Library folder is hidden, so this is quicker than clicking down to it. From Terminal:

open ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User\ Content.localized/Templates.localized

You can also hold ⌥ while opening the Go menu in Finder, which adds a Library entry.

Where a saved template ends up

Microsoft's Mac steps: open the presentation, choose File > Save as Template, type a name, and next to File Format choose PowerPoint Template (.potx) (or PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Template (.potm) if it has macros). Unless you pick another place in the Where box, Microsoft says the template is saved in ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content/Templates, which is the Templates.localized folder above under its Finder name.

To use it, choose File > New from Template and select it. A template saved somewhere else will not be listed there, so if one is missing, search for its name (see the last section). To remove old templates, Microsoft says to drag them from that folder to the Trash.

Themes are separate from templates

A theme is the set of colours, fonts and effects. A template can also include slide layouts, content and placeholder text. They are stored in different folders: a .thmx goes in Themes.localized, a .potx goes in Templates.localized.

To save a theme, Microsoft's Mac steps are: on the Design tab, hover over any theme, click the down arrow below the themes panel, then Save Current Theme. A theme saved to the Themes folder shows in the gallery under Custom Themes; for one saved elsewhere, use Browse for Themes in the same menu. Microsoft calls it the Themes folder without giving the path; the Themes.localized folder above is where third-party guides and the folder layout point.

Changing the default look of new presentations

PowerPoint for Mac has a default theme setting. Microsoft's steps: apply the theme you want and save the presentation first, then on the Design tab click the arrow under Themes, Control-click the theme and choose Set as Default Theme. New presentations then open with it. For a full template with your own layouts and placeholders, save it as a .potx and start decks with File > New from Template.

The Normal.dotm file in Templates.localized is Word's default template, not PowerPoint's. Leave it where it is.

Files that start with ~$ (for example ~$Normal.dotm) are small lock files that Office writes while a document is open. They are not templates and need no action.

PowerPoint's own container

PowerPoint is a sandboxed app, so it also has a private container:

~/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Powerpoint/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/Office

On the Mac used for this guide it holds 16.0, MIPSDK and OTele folders, not your templates. It is where Office keeps app-private data. You normally have no reason to change anything in it, so if a tutorial tells you to put a template there, use Templates.localized instead.

Back them up or move them to a new Mac

Quit PowerPoint, Word and Excel first. Then copy the whole content folder somewhere safe, which changes nothing in the original:

cp -R ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User\ Content.localized ~/Desktop/Office-user-content-backup

On a new Mac, install Office and open PowerPoint once so the group container exists, quit, then copy the files you want back into Templates.localized and Themes.localized. Copy individual files rather than replacing the whole folder, so you do not overwrite defaults that the new install has just created. Time Machine includes this folder unless you excluded Library.

Do not delete Templates.localized or the .localized marker files inside it. If you clear out old templates, move the ones you no longer want to the Trash one at a time, with the Office apps closed.

Why a normal search misses them

Finder and Spotlight searches leave out ~/Library, and these folders sit inside a group container, which is protected by macOS. A search for a template you remember by name therefore returns nothing, even though the file is there. Browsing from the template gallery works, but only shows what the app has loaded.

Finding a template by name

Type part of the template's file name into Everywhere, for example quarterly or .potx, to list every template file with its folder shown, whether it is in the group container, in Documents or still in Downloads. Press ⌘↵ to reveal the match in Finder. Group containers, Documents and Downloads are all locations macOS protects, so Everywhere finds files there once it has Full Disk Access. It searches file names only, not the slides inside a template.

Common questions

Where does PowerPoint save templates on a Mac?

Your templates go in ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/User Content.localized/Templates.localized, shared with Word and Excel. Saved themes go in the Themes.localized folder beside it.

How do I open the PowerPoint templates folder on a Mac?

In Finder choose Go > Go to Folder (⇧⌘G) and paste the Templates.localized path, or run open on it in Terminal. Finder shows the folder as Templates because it hides the .localized ending.

What is the difference between a PowerPoint theme and a template?

A theme (.thmx) holds colours, fonts and effects. A template (.potx) can also carry slide layouts and content. They are kept in different folders inside the Office user-content folder.

How do I make PowerPoint use my design for new presentations on a Mac?

Apply the theme and save the presentation, then on the Design tab click the arrow under Themes, Control-click the theme and choose Set as Default Theme. For full layouts, save a .potx template and start decks with File > New from Template.