Running a Slide Show
“Slide Show” view is used to display the presentation on or from your computer. You can view either the entire presentation, or just few a few slides. This is the best way to view your presentation for its clarity, flow, appearance, and impact on the audience.
You can run your presentation in “Slide Show” view by clicking the “Slide Show” tab in the Ribbon. In the “Start Slide Show” group, you can either click the “From Beginning” button to start the slide show from the first slide or you can click the “From Current Slide” button to start your slide show from the currently selected slide in your presentation.
You can click the screen with your mouse to advance through the slides and animations in your presentation. Once you have viewed the entire presentation, the slide show will close and return to the previous view that was used before PowerPoint ran the slide show. However, you should note that you may also press the “Esc” key on your keyboard to exit the slide show at any time.
If you right-click when in “Slide Show” view, you’ll see the command options that you have for navigating your presentation and adding annotations to the slide in a pop-up menu that appears. One command option is called “Pointer Options.” If you roll over this command in the pop-up menu, you’ll see a listing of the various pointer options that you have. You can toggle the display arrow to one of the annotation tools available, select the color of the ink used, and select the eraser to remove annotations that you have added.
A useful command to select from the pop-up menu is the “Help” command. If you select this command, you will see a listing of the many keyboard shortcuts that you can use in “Slide Show” view. These can assist you in minimizing the onscreen distraction when delivering your presentation.
Using Custom Shows
A custom show is simply a subset of slides from a larger presentation that you can define and then playback as a mini-presentation. You may do this for your presentation by clicking the “Custom Slide Show” button in the “Start Slide Show” group on the “Slide Show” tab in the Ribbon. Then select the “Custom Shows…” command from the drop-down menu that appears. In the “Custom Shows” dialog box, click “New…” to launch the “Define Custom Show” dialog box.
First, type in a name for the slide show in the “Slide show name:” text box. Next, select the slides that you want to include from the “Slides in presentation” list box, and then click the “Add>>” button to move them to the “Slides in custom show:” list box. There you can even reorganize them by clicking on a slide, and then clicking the up and down arrows at the right side of the list box.
Once the show is in the order that you want, just click “OK” to have it appear in the “Custom Shows” dialog box. Now you can click on it in this box, and use the “Edit…” button at the right to edit the contents of the custom show in the future if you need to add or remove slides. You can also “Copy” or “Remove” custom shows here as well. Just click “Close” when you are finished setting up your custom shows.
To run the custom slide show in the future, you can just click the “Custom Slide Show” button in the “Start Slide Show” group on the “Slide Show” tab in the Ribbon. Then select the name of the custom slide show that you want to display from the drop-down menu that appears.
