Section 7.1. Setting Up a Slideshow | PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

7.1. Setting Up a Slideshow

After you've put together your slideshowcreated slides, added text and graphics, and so onyou have to give PowerPoint a few instructions on how it should display the slideshow when it's show time. Say you're creating a slideshow that you want to run continuously on a kiosk, with no human intervention. You might want to tell to linger a few seconds longer on certain slides than on others. Or imagine that you have two monitors hooked up to your computer: one set into the wall of a conference room, and one on a laptop placed strategically where only you can see it. You can have PowerPoint display the slideshow on the wall monitor, and the speaker notes on the laptop.

Using the Slide Show tab (Figure 7-1), you can set these options and more. The following sections show you how.

Figure 7-1. The Slide Show tab offers a grab-bag of options you can set to tell PowerPoint how you want your slideshow to appear when it runs on a computer.

7.1.1. Choosing a Slideshow Mode

The first thing to do when you're setting up your slideshow is to decide which mode you want your slideshow to run in: full-screen, browser, or kiosk. Your choice affects the way folks can interact with your slideshow while it's running, as well as which other options you can set.

7.1.1.1. Full-screen mode

Full-screen mode (Figure 7-2) is the way to go if you'll be the one giving your presentation. As the name implies, in full-screen mode slideshows take up the entire screen. Depending on the PowerPoint options you've set, ghosted controls appear in the lower-left corner of a full-screen slideshow. Other ways you can interact with a full-screen slideshow running include keyboard shortcuts and a right-click menu (Section 7.3).

The program assumes you want full-screen mode unless you tell it different. But if you (or a coworker) has set your slideshow to another mode and you want to set it back, here's how:

Choose Slide Show Set Up Set Up Slide Show .

The Set Up Show dialog box (Figure 7-3) appears.
Turn on the radio button next to "Presented by a speaker (full screen)."

7.1.1.2. Browser mode

When you set up a slideshow to run in browser mode, your slides don't take over the entire screen; instead, they appear in a self-contained window (see Figure 7-4). A specialized right-click menu appears (Section 7.3), offering choices that folks running your presentation might find handyprinting your slides, for example. Designed to be relatively easy for non-PowerPoint folks to figure out how to run, browser mode is an option for slideshows you're planning to distribute by CD or email.

Figure 7-2. Full-screen mode is the way to go if you plan to run your slideshow yourself, because it gives you the most options for interacting with your slideshow. Pressing Esc ends the presentation.

To set up your slideshow to run in browser mode:

Choose Slide Show Set Up Set Up Slide Show .

The Set Up Show dialog box appears.
Turn on the radio button next to "Browsed by an individual (window)."
For your audience's sake, also make sure the Show Scrollbar checkbox, which now becomes available, is turned on .

If you leave this option turned off, your audience won't see an obvious way to scroll through your slides. They must either know to right-click (which displays a menu of options) or sit there frustrated.

Figure 7-3. The Set Up Show dialog box lets you set useful but relatively seldom-used options that wouldn't fit on the Slide Show tab.

7.1.1.3. Kiosk mode

If you're planning to let your slideshow run unattended, kiosk mode is what you want. In kiosk mode, there are no ghosted controls or right-click menuswhich means there's nothing built-in that your audience can click to start your slideshow, stop it, hop from one slide to the next, or otherwise interact with your slides. After all, since there won't be a presenter, you don't want to include presenter controls and risk someone wandering by and fiddling with them.

But what no presenter controls also means is that if you set up your slideshow to run in kiosk mode, you must set automatic timings (Section 7.1.4) so your slideshow plays automatically all the way through before looping around again.

To set up your slideshow to run in kiosk mode:

Choose Slide Show Set Up Set Up Slide Show .

The Set Up Show dialog box appears.

Figure 7-4. In browser mode, no PowerPoint experience is necessary. To scroll from slide to slide, your audience uses familiar scroll bars. To close the slideshow, they click the familiar X in the upper-right corner of the browser window.

Turn on the radio button next to "Browsed at a kiosk (full screen)."

Typically, you'll save kiosk-mode slideshows as self-running PowerPoint shows (Section 7.4).

Tip: Pressing Esc stops a slideshow running in kiosk mode, so if you're setting up a kiosk slideshow to run automatically and want to prevent folks from inadvertently stopping it in its tracks the second you turn your back, make sure you hide the keyboard.

7.1.2. Hiding Individual Slides

First, make sure your slideshow includes all the slides you want to showand none that you don't. To eliminate a slide from a particular slideshow, you don't have to delete it from the presentationyou can choose to hide it temporarily. That way, you can always take it out of hiding when you want to use it again.

Say you're giving a presentation to management. One of your slides is quite hightecha complicated chart and some head-busting equations. Since this level of detail may confuse your audience, you can hide that slide. If someone in your audience happens to ask a pertinent question during the presentation, you can display the slide manually, as described in the table in Section 7.3. The same slide may be appropriate for the engineers you're giving the same presentation to later in the week, so you can bring it out of hiding for that show.

Note: Because hiding a slide doesn't delete it, don't rely on hiding to conceal sensitive or proprietary information. There's always a chance that you (or someone else running your slideshow) could unhide it accidentally . Instead, either delete the slide or create a custom slideshow (Section 7.2.1).

To hide a slide:

In the Slides pane in Normal view, select the slide (or slides) you want to hide .

If you don't see thumbnails of your slides on the left side of your screen, choose View Presentation Views Normal to restore the Slides pane.
Set Up Hide Slide.
In the Slides pane, the number of your newly hidden slide appears with a line through it (Figure 7-5).
The next time your presentation runs, PowerPoint skips the hidden slide(s) .

7.1.3. Setting Up a Speaker Notes Screen

Pros use teleprompters for a reason: they work. When your brain goes blank and you forget an important point, having an electronic cheat sheet that only you can see can save your presentation (and your reputation as a confident, extemporaneous speaker). PowerPoint offers the next best thing to a teleprompter : It lets you run your slideshow on one monitor, and your speaker notes on another. While your audience is looking at your slides or at you, you can sneak a peek at your notes. And because you're not fumbling with 3 x 5 cards, no one will be the wiser.

Figure 7-5. Hide Slide is a toggle option, so clicking Hide Slide while you've got a visible slide selected hides the slide. Clicking it while you've got a hidden slide selected unhides the slide. You can also hide slides from Slide Sorter view.

To set up a presenter view, first connect two different monitors to the computer you intend to run your presentation on. (A laptop computer counts as one monitor.) Once the monitors are plugged in, open the presentation you want to set up as a presenter view. Then go to Slide Show Monitors and turn on the checkbox next to Use Presenter View.

Click the down-arrow next to Show Presentation On (which has now become available), and then, from the list that appears, choose the monitor on which you want your slideshow to appear. Your speaker notes appear on the monitor you're using to follow these steps.

7.1.4. Setting Up Automatic Timing

You've got two choices when it comes to clicking through your slides at showtime: you can click through each slide manually, or you can set up an automatic slideshow by telling PowerPoint when to go from one slide to the next. An automatic slideshow is useful if, for example, you're delivering your presentation on a kiosk, or if you have exactly 40 minutes to give your presentation and need PowerPoint to keep you on track. Also, if you've done a presentation many times, you may be able to give your spiel and let PowerPoint change the slides automatically, at just the right moment.

The key to setting up an automatic slideshow is to rehearse your presentation. You run through it just as you would in front of a live audience, while PowerPoint's virtual stopwatch keeps track of how many seconds you spend on each slide. Then, if you're satisfied with the pacing, you tell PowerPoint to keep those timings.

Tip: Instead of painstakingly rehearsing your presentation, you can assign each slide, say, a minute and a half (or any amount of time you choose). In the Slides pane, select a slide. Then select Animations

Transition to This Slide, turn on the "Automatically after checkbox, and type the amount of time you want the currently selected slide to remain onscreen. (Make sure you turn off On Mouse Click.) Repeat for the remaining slides in your slideshow. Alternatively, for each slide you can type the amount of slide time you want in the Rehearsal dialog box (Figure 7-6).

To rehearse your presentation and set timings:

Click Slide Show Set Up Rehearse Timings .

PowerPoint begins a full-screen version of your slideshow and displays the Rehearsal toolbar (Figure 7-6).

Figure 7-6. Rehearsing your timing not only helps you cement in your mind what you're going to say and how you're going to say it, it also lets you know whether you have enough slides to fill your allotted speaking time (or too many).

Step through your presentation as you normally would, speaking aloud and gesturing to a pretend audience .

Hopping around slides in your slideshow affects your rehearsal timings. For example, clicking Repeat to back up to an earlier slide stops the overall slideshow clock, which doesn't start up again until you return to (or pass) the slide you were on when you clicked Repeat.

Typing the number of a particular slide and then pressing Enter to hop directly to that slide resets the current slide clock even if you've already timed that slide; meanwhile, the overall slideshow clock keeps on ticking away.

If the phone rings, the dog barks, your boss steps in, or you're otherwise interrupted , head to the Rehearsal toolbar and click Pause to stop the clock. Then, after you've handled the interruption, click Pause again to resume your rehearsal where you left off.

When you get to the last slide, take as long as you need to wrap up your presentation, and then press Esc .

PowerPoint kicks up the dialog box you see in Figure 7-7.

Figure 7-7. If you're not sure you're happy with the pace at which you just rehearsed your presentation, choose Yes anyway. You can always rehearse again laterand when you do, PowerPoint will discard these timings and use your new timings.

Tip: You can also press Esc at any time to abort the rehearsal.

Choose Yes if you want PowerPoint to flip through the slides at the pace you just rehearsed the next time you run your slideshow. Choose No if you want to flip through your slides manually, or if you've discovered during your rehearsal that you need to add or delete slides, rearrange your slideshow, or come up with a lot more banter .

If you chose Yes, PowerPoint displays the Slide Sorter view showing your timings. (If you chose No, PowerPoint simply returns you to Normal view.)
On the Slide Show tab, make sure Use Rehearsed Timings checkbox is turned on .

The next time you start your slideshow, PowerPoint uses your rehearsed timings to click through your slides automatically.

7.1.5. Looping Continuously

Whether you choose to click through each slide yourself or use automatic timings (Section 7.1.4) to tell PowerPoint how fast to move through each slide, you usually want to stop the slideshow after the last slide. But for those times when you do want your slideshow to loop continuously (to begin the slideshow over again the instant it finishes), you can do that by clicking Slide Show Set Up Set Up Slide Show to open the Set Up Show dialog box. Then, in the Show Options section, turn on the "Loop continuously until 'Esc" checkbox. When you take down the show at the end of the day, just press the Esc key to stop the show and regain control of your laptop.

Note: If you set up your slideshow to run in kiosk mode (Section 7.1.1.3), you don't have to tell PowerPoint to loop continuouslyit assumes that's what you want. In fact, PowerPoint deactivates the "Loop continuously until 'Esc'" option.