How to change master page in SharePoint Online

In this SharePoint Online tutorial, we will discuss how to change master page in SharePoint Online Office 365.

By using a master page, you can set the look and feel of a SharePoint site. There are different ways we can create master pages in SharePoint Online. Like you can create a master page using SharePoint designer 2013, SharePoint design manager, or even we can use visual studio.

Change master page in SharePoint Online

Microsoft has already provided various ways to change the master page in SharePoint Online.

Let us check step by step how to change master page in SharePoint Online.

Change master in SharePoint Online using Browser

Now, we will see how to change master page in SharePoint Online by using the out of box feature from the browser itself.

Step 1: Log in to your SharePoint Online site -> Site settings -> click on the Master page Under Look and Feel.

Note: Make sure you should have the SharePoint server publishing feature should be enabled.

Step 2: By default, you can see two master pages: seattle and oslo in the dropdown.

If you have created any custom master pages in SharePoint, those will also appear in the same dropdown.

Step 3: Now my Default master page is already set as Seattle.master. So if I want to change it to oslo.master or any other master page then we have to select it here and click on OK to set as default master page.

This is how you can change the master page to oslo in SharePoint Online.

Change master page using SharePoint Designer

Now, we will see how to change the master page using SharePoint Designer in SharePoint Online.

Step 1: Log in to the SharePoint Designer 2013 -> Go to the Master Page section -> Select the Master page -> Set as default Master Page.

Change master page using Master Page Gallery in SharePoint Online

Now, we will see how to change master page from the master page gallery in SharePoint Online.

If you have created a SharePoint Online master page using SharePoint designer or SharePoint design manager, then you can upload it here.

In order to set a new master page will have to upload it to the Master page Library which is located at https://domain.sharepoint.com/_catalogs/masterpage

To assign the master page to your SharePoint Site, Go to Site Settings > Design Manager > Publish and Apply Design > Assign master pages to your site based on the device channel.

Choose your Master page from the dropdown, specify whether you want to “Reset all subsites to inherit this site master page setting” or not. Then hit OK.

After a refresh you should see your new master page in action in the SharePoint Online site.

Note: Sometime Master page option will disappear in the SharePoint site so don’t worry at that time, Just go to the Site feature and activate the publishing feature.

Set master page for a particular page in SharePoint

Recently we were working in a public-facing SharePoint 2013 site, where we have created our own custom master page and we applied it throughout the site collections.

By default when you change the master page from Site Settings -> Master Page which is under Look and Feels. The master page will be applied to the whole SharePoint site.

But according to one of my requirements in one of the page we need to set the default Seattle master page.

For this, we have to change the master page on the particular page with the help of SharePoint designer 2013.

Open the SharePoint site using SharePoint designer 2013.

Let us say the particular page presented in the Site Pages document library then click on Site Pages under Site Objects in SharePoint designer. And then right-click on the particular page and click on Edit File in Advanced Mode.

By default when you open any site you can see by default the master page file path will be like below:

MasterPageFile="~masterurl/default.master"

Now let us say if you want to set the master page as Seattle master page then modify the tag like below:

MasterPageFile="/_catalogs/masterpage/Seattle.master"

Then save the page and refresh the page in the browser. You will see the particular page will use the Seattle.master page.

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In this SharePoint tutorial, we learned how to change the master page in SharePoint Online.