16. Running Slide Show Like a Pro
In This Chapter
- Four Ways to Start Slide Show
- Working with the View Mode Buttons
- Inking
- Editing During a Presentation
- Set Up Slide Show
- View Notes on Your Laptop While the Audience Sees Normal Slides (Presenter View)
- Slide Show Keyboard Shortcuts
- Widescreen (Custom Slide Sizes)
- Fixing Flickering Problems
At this point in the book, we’ve hopefully convinced you that there’s a great deal more to PowerPoint than just jotting down some thoughts and starting up Slide Show. Now that you have created your slides and perfected every element, PowerPoint Slide Show is how you present them. Slide Show is a core part of PowerPoint because it is the vehicle you use to communicate your ideas to the audience.
Four Ways to Start Slide Show
Can you believe that there are four ways to start a slideshow? Check out the list that follows to find your favorite method.
- Press F5 on the keyboard to start at the beginning of the show.
- Choose the View indicator at the bottom of the window on the status bar to start at the current slide.
- Click Slide Show on the View tab (see Figure 16.1) to start at the beginning of the show.
Figure 16.1a. Access Slide Show via the View tab.
Figure 16.1b. Access Slide Show via the status bar.
Figure 16.1c. Access Slide Show via the Slide Show tab.
- Choose options on the Slide Show tab to start at the beginning of the show or at the current slide, depending on the button clicked.
Working with the View Mode Buttons
You’re undoubtedly familiar with the three little buttons near the right side of the status bar (see Figure 16.2) that let you switch views:
Figure 16.2 You can find these view buttons on the lower right part of your window on the status bar. From left to right, we have Normal View, Slide Sorter View, and Slide Show.
Did you know that you could press Ctrl or Shift while clicking the View mode buttons to invoke all sorts of crazy commands?
Table 16.1 summarizes what you can do using modifier keys.
Table 16.1 Use Modifier Keys to Trigger Special Behavior
Here are a few more shortcuts:
- Clicking (or Ctrl+clicking) Slide Sorter View toggles between Slide Sorter and Normal View.
- Shift+clicking Slide Sorter View switches to Handout mode, no matter where you start.
- Ctrl+Shift Slide Sorter View, followed by Slide Sorter View toggles between Outline and Slide Sorter View.
Note
In PowerPoint 2003 when you hovered over the different views with a shortcut key pressed, the ToolTip would tell you what it does. With PowerPoint 2007 it does not do that, but that’s why we made this nice table for you.
Two notable shortcuts exist out of those shown in Table 16.1 that we want to emphasize. They’re notable primarily because we don’t think that there’s a way to invoke them except through these shortcuts.
The coolest one is Ctrl+Slide Show. We often find ourselves playing the full screen Slide Show just to preview an animation. With this, we can display a little Slide Show window and simultaneously edit slides in the main window. The little window is a fully working instance of the Slide Show. Here we’ve inked in it, just as we can in the real Slide Show (see Figure 16.3).
Figure 16.3 Inking inside the mini-slideshow.
Note
The mini-slideshow shows up on the same monitor as the main slideshow.
The second trick is the ability to edit text in PowerPoint without having to worry about how it looks. Ctrl+Shift+Slide Sorter View displays a full page outline to let you focus on your text. The text here must be in a text placeholder for it to show up here; otherwise, if the text is within a SmartArt or Shape, it won’t show up.
Shift+F5
While we’re on the subject of the three dinky little buttons, it pains us whenever we see someone trying to click on that little slideshow button during their presentation to resume their slideshow.
Pressing F5 starts the slideshow over again from the first slide, but what if the presenter wants the presentation to start on the current slide? Going to the Slide Show tab on the Start Slide Show group and choosing From Current Slide does the right thing but takes a little longer. So, most people start aiming for that tiny Slide Show button.
As you guessed from the title of this section, the answer is by pressing Shift+F5. This functionality has been around since PowerPoint 2003. Next time you’re at a presentation and you see someone painfully trying to get the mouse to click that little slideshow button, be a hero. Yell out, “Shift+F5!"
Inking
Few people know that while you’re in Slide Show mode, you can use the Ink feature to draw and label while you’re presenting. Be sure to read more about Ink in Chapter 9, “Inserting Content into PowerPoint.”
Why Ink?
PowerPoint makes it very easy to create freehand ink notes while in Slide Show. You might use this to
- Circle something on the slide you want to draw attention to
- Draw a quick diagram, perhaps to answer an audience member’s question
How to Ink
To draw
1. Make sure that you’re in Slide Show. Press F5 or go to the Start Slide Show group on the Slide Show tab and click the From Beginning button.
2. Switch to the Pen tool by clicking on the Pen icon in the bottom-left corner of the screen and then clicking one of the pens (see Figure 16.4). Alternatively, you can get to the pen from the contextual menu during Slide Show (see Figure 16.5).
Figure 16.4 The Pen tool found in the lower left corner of Slide Show mode.
Figure 16.5 The Pen tool can also be accessed from the contextual menu during Slide Show mode.
3. Then, use your mouse to draw. Click to put the pen against the paper and just drag the mouse around to draw. (If you have a Tablet PC or a Wacom tablet, you can use your pen to draw.)
Tip
Since the release of PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint has saved slideshow ink using the Tablet PC hooks (APIs) that Windows provides. If you use the pen on a Tablet PC with an active digitizer—which is the case with most Tablet PCs—PowerPoint records pressure sensitivity information about each stroke, which it can’t record if you use the mouse or a Wacom tablet. In short, if you want prettier ink, use a Tablet PC.
Saving Your Ink
Sometimes you ink to make a temporary point. Other times, you ink to record some important information that you’d like to save for later. For example, maybe you’re giving a dry run of your talk and you ink some comments people in your audience gave so that you can refer to them later.
When you are ready to exit Slide Show, press Esc and PowerPoint asks you whether you want to save the ink (see Figure 16.6). Click Keep if you want to save the ink with the presentation.
Figure 16.6 When you exit Slide Show, PowerPoint asks whether you want to save your ink.
Note
Keep in mind that the ink added to a presentation cannot be selected via Ctrl+A; you must click the ink object to select it.
PowerPoint Document Recovery can save your neck when you forget to save your presentation. If you haven’t saved in a long time and PowerPoint or Windows crashes, the next time you open PowerPoint, it usually still has your data and any changes (see the “Customizing AutoSave” section in Chapter 18, “Publishing Your Presentation to Any Format”). Unfortunately, this is never true for slideshow ink until you exit Slide Show and choose to “keep” your ink. If you’re inking information you can’t afford to lose, periodically exit Slide Show and save your presentation.
Editing During a Presentation
Ever see a mistake while you’re presenting your slideshow and have the immediate need to fix it? Your first reaction might be to exit the slideshow, fix the mistake, and then restart the slideshow. But that’s overkill.
Caution
Be very careful when you decide to edit a presentation during the presentation. This can be seen as unprofessional and will definitely distract you. The audience might lose interest or become bored.
When you’re presenting your slideshow, PowerPoint simply opens a big Slide Show window and plops it on top of everything.
This Slide Show window is automatically synced with the content in the main PowerPoint window, so any changes you make to the presentation while you’re presenting it updates instantly in Slide Show. So, there’s no need to exit Slide Show at all. All you need to do is get back to the main PowerPoint window to make the changes and then switch back to Slide Show:
- While in Slide Show, press Ctrl+T to display the Windows taskbar. Click Microsoft PowerPoint—[Presentation Name]. Make sure that you don’t click on PowerPoint Slide Show because that will just bring you back into the slideshow. You can also press the Windows button on your keyboard, which brings up the Windows taskbar and activates the Start menu.
- Another method for switching back to the main PowerPoint window is to hold down Alt and while it’s held down, keep pressing Tab to navigate through all the open windows. Release the Alt key when you’ve selected the Microsoft PowerPoint—[Presentation Name] window (see Figure 16.7).
Figure 16.7 Alt+Tab is a common way to switch between programs in Windows and is useful even outside of your PowerPoint adventures.
Note
This image is taken from a computer running Microsoft Windows Vista without Aero enabled; if you have a different operating system or configuration, you might see something different.
Now that you’re back in the main PowerPoint window, go ahead and make your changes. When you’re done, switch back to the Slide Show window by clicking the PowerPoint Slide Show option in the Windows taskbar or by using Alt+Tab again, and your changes should be updated instantly.
Caution
Sorry Office XP and 2003 users: Apparently the changes don’t show up in your slideshow after making changes like this.
Set Up Slide Show
This is an important dialog to explain because it has a lot of options that help you customize how you can use Slide Show for different purposes.
You can access the Set Up Slide Show dialog from the Slide Show tab, Set Up Slide Show group, as shown in Figure 16.8.
Figure 16.8 Opening the Set Up Show dialog.
Show Type
The three types of Slide Shows you can use PowerPoint for are Speaker, Individual, and Kiosk. See the top left area of Figure 16.9 for the show types.
Figure 16.9 The Set Up Show dialog.
Speaker, used when the Presented by a Speaker (Full Screen) option is selected from the dialog, launches the Slide Show in a mode that consumes the entire screen and is useful for presenting to an audience.
Individual is meant for viewing a slide deck or presentation or reading through it. This view arranges all slides into one window and allows you to scroll down to view the next slide. Figure 16.10 shows an example of this.
Figure 16.10 Individual browsing mode lets you read through a presentation and scroll through slides in a separate window.
After you start dragging the scrollbar (if enabled), a description of the slide and the slide number appear so that you know how far you are scrolling.
Kiosk mode is interesting because it allows you to set up a Slide Show that is interactive, yet contained in an environment you control. What actually happens is that Kiosk mode does not allow any of the normal input to advance to the next slide, such as clicking anywhere on the slide or using the right arrow on the keyboard. Instead, it does allow mouse clicks but only for things such as Action Settings and Hyperlinks. This is useful for creating an interactive setup in which users can advance to slides based on their clicks on Action Settings, while remaining within PowerPoint.
This means that if you have a presentation you want to use in Kiosk mode, you must either use Automatic Slide Transition Timings setup (which automatically advances to the next slide after a certain amount of time), or have Action Settings or Hyperlinks on each slide, which a user can click to advance the slide.
This is useful for setting up displays and demos that users can play with, but remember not to include a keyboard; otherwise, the user can press the Esc key to exit Kiosk mode.
Present a Range of Slides
Custom shows are described in Chapter 15, “Going Beyond Slide-by-Slide,” and you can choose to start a specific Custom Show from this dialog. In addition, you can select a range of slides to show by choosing a From and To slide, and only those will show up in Slide Show mode.
Presenting in Different Resolutions
Under the Performance area of the Set Up Show dialog is a drop-down that lets you choose the resolution used for displaying the Slide Show (see Figure 16.11). Because this is performance related, you really want to use this when you feel that your presentations are sluggish or you know that the computer you are presenting on will not handle your presentation well.
Figure 16.11 You can change the Slide Show resolution from the Set Up Show dialog to improve performance.
As you probably already know, lower resolutions result in faster performance (more responsive, less of a lagged feeling) but also look worse.
Note
If the resolution used in Slide Show in the Set Up Show dialog is different from the default resolution used for the computer, the display might flicker when it enters Slide Show and switches resolutions. Similarly, this could happen when exiting Slide Show mode.
View Notes on Your Laptop While the Audience Sees Normal Slides (Presenter View)
“You know what you guys should add to PowerPoint? The ability for me to see my slides and notes on my laptop screen while I’m projecting just the slides with the projector.”
This is one of the most requested PowerPoint features, and...wait for it...it’s one that’s already in the product.
Note
Presenter View is not new to PowerPoint 2007—it’s been around since PowerPoint 2002—but it did get a big makeover for the 2007 release.
Presenter View Features
While all the audience sees your normal slides, you, the presenter, can
- View thumbnails of upcoming slides.
- Click a thumbnail to jump to a particular slide quickly.
- See your notes.
- See the elapsed time.
- Black out the screen (there are other ways to do this; see the keyboard shortcuts later in this chapter).
While you’re in Presenter View, don’t be fooled by the notes that you see. You cannot actually edit them while you’re in this view even though a cursor appears when you click on text in that pane.
Tip
To view upcoming slides or previous slides, you can slide the Thumbnail pane scrollbar. Unfortunately, you cannot preview them in your view without showing the audience yet because your view will match what is shown on the Slide Show.
Setting Up Multiple Monitors for Use with Presenter View
To set this up, your machine must have support for multiple monitors. Most laptops made in the last couple of years have this built-in, so you can project on a screen while still viewing stuff on your laptop screen. To do this on a desktop computer, though, you likely need two video cards or one really spiffy video card.
Before you can set this feature up, you need to make sure that you’re not using monitor mirroring:
1. Right-click a blank area of your desktop and click Properties.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Click the picture of the other monitor. It might be grayed out.
4. Check the Extend My Windows Desktop onto this Monitor box.
5. Click OK. Your screen will flicker for a bit. Answer Yes when asked whether you want to keep the new settings. If it doesn’t flicker, your machine might not support this.
After you’ve finished with the settings, do the following:
1. Launch PowerPoint.
2. Go to the Slide Show tab, Monitors group.
3. Check the Use Presenter View check box at the bottom (see Figure 16.12).
Figure 16.12 Presenter View.
4. Click the Show Presentation On select box to choose which monitor you want to display the slideshow on. If this is grayed out, you don’t have multiple displays set up correctly (or your video card won’t support the feature).
You can also choose which monitor to use and whether to enter Presenter View by going to the Slide Show tab, Set Up group and clicking Set Up Show.
Using Multiple Monitors without using Presenter View
Alternatively, if you don’t check the Show Presenter View check box but you still select a different monitor, you can have the PowerPoint editing screen open on one monitor and the Slide Show running for the audience on another.
How is this helpful?
- Presenter View’s optimized for showing you the most important information that you will typically need during a presentation, but this gives you access to all of PowerPoint, not just the Presenter View subset.
- All the tips from the “Editing During a Presentation” section earlier in this chapter still apply. So, you can make edits to the presentation that update in the slideshow immediately. Plus, because all your edits are happening on a different monitor, the audience doesn’t have to see the process going on. (They might just think their eyes were tricking them that there was a mistake, as you can quickly fix it without anyone being the wiser.)
Slide Show Keyboard Shortcuts
In addition to using the modifier keys with the View Mode buttons listed back in Table 16.1, PowerPoint has a bunch of shortcut keys you can use while presenting in Slide Show mode. A few of our favorites are
- Pressing B blacks out the screen, and pressing W turns the screen white. Press any key to go back to your slides. We find this useful for hiding slides during breaks in the middle of a presentation.
- Type a number and then press Enter to jump to a particular slide. For example, pressing 5+Enter jumps to slide number 5. Or, if you’re not so secretive, press Ctrl+S to display a dialog that lets you jump to any slide. Or, if you don’t remember either of those, just right-click while in the slideshow and use the Go to Slide menu command, as shown in Figure 16.13.
Figure 16.13 Ctrl+S shows a list of slides; choosing Go to Slide on the context menu shows a list of slides as well.
Tip
Here’s a cool trick: Type 9999 and Enter, and this will take you to the last slide in the show. Thanks, Kathy Jacobs!
- Pressing Ctrl+A makes the cursor visible so that you can use the mouse to point to something.
- Hold both mouse buttons down for two seconds, and you will jump back to the first slide.
- Press F1 while you’re in a slideshow to see a more complete list (see Figure 16.14).
Figure 16.14 Bring up a list of slideshow shortcuts by pressing F1 during a slideshow.
If you are using Presenter View, this same list can be accessed via the Help button on the Presenter View screen.
- Use the arrow keys to advance to the next slide or return to the previous slide. This trick does not work in Kiosk mode.
- Press Esc to exit from Slide Show mode.
Widescreen (Custom Slide Sizes)
By default, PowerPoint assumes that you’re going to be presenting on a screen with 4x3 dimensions. With the proliferation of widescreen monitors these days, this means that you waste some screen space in a slideshow. Or, perhaps you plan to print your presentation on wide paper, which doesn’t have 4x3 dimensions.
PowerPoint addresses this by letting you change the slide size. To do this, go to the Design tab in the Page Setup group and click Page Setup (see Figure 16.15).
Figure 16.15 Click the Page Setup on the Ribbon to launch the Page Setup dialog.
This brings up the Page Setup dialog box shown in Figure 16.16. If you have a widescreen you’re going to be presenting on, choose the second or third options, which are On-Screen Show (16:9) or On-Screen Show (16:10).
Figure 16.16 Page Setup dialog.
Caution
The safest way to change slide sizes is to do this before you add any content to your slides. When you change slide size, all existing content is scaled to fit the new size. For example, if you add a circle to a slide but then resize the slide to be tall and thin, the circle will be squished to fit the new size. Unless your slides are very simple, you will get the best results by resizing the slide first and then adding your content. Even though your laptop might have a widescreen, you could ultimately be showing your presentation using a projector that isn’t widescreen. If all your content was prepared using a widescreen page setup, it will be squished when you present it on a normal 4:3 screen. So, it’s always a good idea to see where you’re presenting rather than get hosed at the last minute.
Another thing to pay attention to is that when switching to widescreen, the textual content changes locations and anything set to word wrap can change.
Fixing Flickering Problems
Occasionally, people have had issues in which PowerPoint continually redraws, flashes, or blinks continuously.
Usually, this is because of bad hardware drivers. Unreliable drivers are one reason why PowerPoint doesn’t enable hardware acceleration by default. It’s also why PowerPoint has a hard time creating pretty animations and effects; it can’t depend on all the necessary hardware being reliable.
Getting New Graphics Drivers
Graphics drivers are often out-of-date and need to be updated even after buying a brand new machine.
The best way to resolve this issue is to get the newest graphics drivers from your graphics card or computer manufacturer. For example, Dell customers can get up-to-date drivers from: http://support.dell.com/support/downloads.
Microsoft might also have the updated drivers up on Microsoft Update. Microsoft Update scans your machine for updates and might list a newer drive as one of the optional hardware updates: http://update.microsoft.com.
Caution
Don’t install new graphics drivers the day before a big presentation. Updating your drivers usually helps, but sometimes they can cause unexpected system instability too. Give yourself a few days to work out the kinks.
Disabling Hardware Acceleration
If you find no success with updating drivers, many have had success disabling hardware acceleration. Go to the Slide Show tab, Set Up group and click Set Up Slide Show. Make sure that the Use Hardware Graphics Acceleration box is unchecked.
If that doesn’t work, try disabling graphics acceleration throughout Windows by right-clicking the Desktop and clicking Properties. On the Settings tab, click Advanced, and then click the Troubleshoot tab. Use the slider to reduce hardware acceleration.
Making Graphics Faster
On the other hand, if everything’s working great for you but feels a bit slow, try enabling hardware acceleration by doing the opposite of what is described in the previous section. When acceleration is on, PowerPoint tries pushing off a bunch of work to the hardware, which should speed things up.
It probably doesn’t need to be said, but if your slideshow is still slow after doing that, you might need to get a new computer, purchase a better graphics card, or install more memory.