Add advanced guide/grid layout tools

[kieren-boop]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Yes. PowerPoint’s current gridline and guide system is fine for basic alignment, but it becomes awkward and limiting for structured layout work.

A common example is trying to build a 12-column grid, similar to what designers use in web or editorial design. In PowerPoint today, that means manually adding and positioning guides one by one, checking measurements repeatedly, and doing a lot of trial and error. It is slow, easy to get wrong, and hard to adjust once the layout changes.

This makes it unnecessarily difficult to create consistent, professional slide layouts with defined columns, gutters, and margins.

Describe the solution you'd like
I’d like the add-in to support a much more usable guide/grid system for slide layout design.

Ideally, this would include the ability to:

create custom column-based grids, such as 12-column, 8-column, or 16-column layouts
define margins and gutter width
add, remove, duplicate, and reposition guides easily
edit guides numerically for precision
save and reuse grid presets
apply a grid to a single slide or across a deck/layout
optionally show/hide and lock guides

The goal is to make grid creation feel intentional and design-friendly, rather than a manual workaround.

Describe alternatives you've considered
The current alternatives are mostly workarounds:

manually adding guides one at a time in PowerPoint
using shapes or tables as temporary layout scaffolding
building custom templates in Slide Master
eyeballing spacing or relying on snap behavior alone

These approaches work to a point, but they are slower, less flexible, and harder to maintain than a proper grid system. They also make iteration harder when a layout needs to be changed later.

There might be other solutions in the market (e.g., BrightSlide) but it would be great to keep this in the one tool.

Additional context
This seems to be a recurring pain point rather than a niche request. Microsoft’s own support documentation notes that PowerPoint’s visible grid uses fixed one-inch squares and that the grid is mainly a visual alignment aid, which is not enough for structured multi-column layout design. Community threads also show repeated confusion around guide creation and management, including users struggling to find the “Add Vertical/Horizontal Guide” commands because they are hidden in a hover submenu, users thinking movable guides had disappeared, and users expecting smaller visible grid spacing after changing settings.

A feature like this would make the add-in especially useful for people designing presentation systems, branded templates, dashboards, data-heavy slides, and layouts that need the same kind of column discipline designers already expect in other tools. It would also help bridge the gap between presentation design and modern layout workflows used in web and product design.