Rehearsing a Presentation

When delivering a slide show, you can move from slide to slide in the following ways:

• Manually. You control when you move by clicking the mouse button, pressing keys, or clicking commands.

• Automatically. PowerPoint displays each slide for a predefined length of time and then displays the next slide.

The length of time a slide appears on the screen is controlled by its slide timing. By default slide timings are divided equally among the animations for each slide. So if a slide has a title and four bullet points that are all animated and you assign a timing of 1 minute to the slide, the five elements will appear at 12-second intervals.

To apply a timing to a single slide, to a group of slides, or to an entire presentation, you first select the slides, and then under Advance Slide in the Transition To This Slide group on the Animations tab, select the Automatically After check box and enter the number of minutes and/or seconds you want each slide to remain on the screen.

Tip 

If you are delivering the presentation in Slide Show view and want to prevent PowerPoint from advancing to the slide according to a slide timing, press the letter S on your keyboard, or right-click the current slide and click Pause. To continue the presentation, press the letter S again, or right-click the slide and click Resume.

If you don’t know how much time to allow for the slide timings of a presentation, you can rehearse the slide show while PowerPoint automatically tracks and sets the timings for you, reflecting the amount of time you spend on each slide during the rehearsal. During the slide show, PowerPoint displays each slide for the length of time you indicated during the rehearsal. In this way, you can synchronize an automatic slide show with a live narration or demonstration.

In this exercise, you will set the timing for one slide and then apply it to an entire presentation. Then you will rehearse the presentation and have PowerPoint set slide timings according to the amount of time you display each slide during the rehearsal.

Use the 02_Rehearsing presentation. This practice file is located in the Chapter16 subfolder under SBS_Office2007.

Open the 02_Rehearsing presentation.

1. On the Animations tab, in the Transition to This Slide group, under Advance Slide, select the Automatically After check box, and then type or select 00:03. Because both check boxes under Advance Slide are selected, the slide will advance either after three seconds or when you click the mouse button.

2. On the View toolbar, click the Slide Show button.

Slide 1 is displayed for three seconds, and then PowerPoint moves to Slide 2.

3. Press to end the show, and then on the View toolbar, click the Slide Sorter button.

Below the lower-left corner of Slide 1 is the slide timing you just applied.

4. Click Slide 1, and then on the Animations tab, in the Transition to This Slide group, click the Apply To All button.

The slide timing you applied to Slide 1 is now applied to all the slides.

Important 

When you click Apply To All, all the transition effects applied to the current slide are transferred to the other slides. If you have applied different transitions to different slides, those individually specified transitions are overwritten. So it’s a good idea to apply all the effects that you want the slides to have in common first. Then you can select individual slides and customize their effects.

5. Switch to Slide Show view, watch as the slides advance, and then click the mouse button when the black screen is displayed.

6. Under Advance Slide in the Transition to This Slide group, clear the Automatically After check box, and then click Apply To All.

The slide timings disappear from below the slides.

7. With Slide 1 selected, on the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click the Rehearse Timings button.

The screen switches to Slide Show view, starts the show, and displays the Rehearsal toolbar in the upper-left corner of the screen. A Slide Time counter is timing the length of time Slide 1 remains on the screen.

8. Wait about 10 seconds, and then on the Rehearsal toolbar, click the Next button.

9. Work your way slowly through the slide show, clicking Next to move to the next slide.

10. If you want to repeat the rehearsal for a particular slide, on the Rehearsal toolbar, click the Repeat button on the Rehearsal toolbar to reset the Slide Time for that slide to 0:00:00.

Tip 

If you want to start the entire rehearsal over again, click the Rehearsal toolbar’s Close button, and when a message asks whether you want to keep the existing timings, click No.

When you reach the end of the slide show, a message box displays the elapsed time for the presentation and asks whether you want to apply the recorded slide timings.

11. Click Yes.

The screen switches back to Slide Sorter view, where the recorded timings have been added below each slide.

12. Click the Animations tab.

The timing for the active slide, Slide 1, appears in the Automatically After box under Advance Slide in the Transition To This Slide group.

13. If the Automatically After setting is not a whole second, click the Up arrow to adjust the time up to the next whole second.

You can manually adjust the timing of any slide by selecting it and changing the setting in this box.

14. On the View toolbar, click the Slide Show button.

The slides advance according to the recorded timings.

15. Press at any time to stop the slide show.

Close the 02_Rehearsing presentation without saving your changes.

Creating a Self-Running Presentation

When slide timings have been applied to a PowerPoint presentation, the presentation can be set up to run automatically, either once or continuously. For example, you might want to set up a self-running presentation for a product demonstration in a store.

To set up a self-running presentation:

1. Open the presentation, and then on the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click the Set Up Slide Show button.

   The Set Up Show dialog box opens.

2. In the Show type area, select the Browsed at a kiosk (full screen) option.

   When you select this option, the Loop Continuously Until ‘Esc’ check box in the Show Options area becomes unavailable so that you cannot clear it. Any narration or animation attached to the presentation will play with the presentation unless you select the Show Without Narration or Show Without Animation check box.

3. Click OK.

4. To test the show, display Slide 1, and on the View toolbar, click the Slide Show button.

   The presentation runs continuously, using its transitions, animations, and slide timings.

5. Press to stop the slide show, and then save the presentation with a different name.

When you are ready to run the presentation, you can navigate to the folder where it is stored, and double-click it. The slide show opens in the view in which it was saved. Switch to Slide Show view to start the presentation. You can press Esc to stop the slide show at any time.