Slide Sorter View

When you're adding all the finishing touches to your slide show, you'll find that the Slide Sorter view is the most useful. Slide Sorter view allows you to view several slides simultaneously . You can move slides around, add and view the timings for individual slides, hide slides, add transitions, and include animation. Slide Sorter view has its own unique toolbar with buttons that make most tasks just a click away.

While in Slide Sorter view, you may see little icons underneath the individual slides. The icons represent transitions, animation, hidden slides, and timings that have been added.

Moving Slides

When you need to rearrange your slides, Slide Sorter view is the place to do it. If possible, set the zoom control so that you can see the slide you want to move and the destination position, as shown in Figure 26.3.

Figure 26.3. You can easily move a slide to any position in the presentation.

To move a slide, follow these steps:

1. Place your mouse pointer on the slide you want to move.

2. Hold down the left mouse button.

3. Drag the mouse pointer to the new position; you should see a vertical line indicating the placement of the slide.

4. Release the mouse button.

Timing

When you want a presentation to run on its own, or a slide show that advances from slide to slide without using the mouse or keyboard, you must set timings for each slide.

You can either make an educated guess as to how long the slide should be displayed (custom timings) or rehearse your presentation and have PowerPoint record the duration (rehearsed timings) before you advance to the next slide, as discussed earlier in this chapter.

It's easiest to set custom timings while you're in Slide Sorter view. To set custom timings for your presentation, follow these steps:

1. Select the slide or slides you want to set timings for.

2. Choose Slide Show, Slide Transition from the menu. The Slide Transition dialog box displays.

3. Under Advance, click the Automatically After check box.

4. Type the number of seconds you want the slide to be displayed onscreen.

5. Click the Apply button.

To select a slide, just click on the slide. To select multiple noncontiguous slides, hold down the Ctrl key and click on each slide you want to select. You can select a contiguous group of slides by clicking on the first slide of the group, holding the Shift key, and clicking on the last slide of the group .

If you want to set the same show timings for all the slides in your presentation, click the Apply to All button in the Slide Transition dialog box.

Rehearse Timings

You can also rehearse your presentation and have PowerPoint automatically add timings for each of your slides. While you're rehearsing your presentation, PowerPoint displays the Rehearsal toolbar as shown previously in this chapter.

To rehearse your presentation and add automatic timings, use the following steps:

1. Choose Slide Show, Rehearse Timings from the menu.

2. Practice your entire presentation as though you were in front of your audience. Click the next button to advance to the next slide and record the time for the current slide.

3. At the end of the show, click the Yes button to record your timings and use them when you view the show.

PowerPoint will display your slides in Slide Sorter view so that you can either edit them or rehearse your show to get new timing values.

Hiding a Slide

Sometimes when you're creating a presentation, you might not be sure whether a piece of information is relevant. Of course, you always want to be prepared (even if you're not a Boy Scout), no matter what might come up. If you have a slide that doesn't need to be shown, you can always leave it in the presentation file, but hide it from the show by following these steps:

1. Select the slide you want to hide.

2. Choose Slide Show, Hide Slide from the menu.

   or

3. Click the Hide Slide button from the Slide Sorter toolbar.

If you're hiding slides, you might not want to have them numbered automatically. Although PowerPoint doesn't display a slide that has been hidden, it doesn't renumber the slides automatically.

Creating a Summary Slide

Creating a summary slide quickly is a great feature of PowerPoint. PowerPoint creates the summary (or agenda) slide from the titles of the slides you select.

To create a summary slide, follow these steps:

1. Switch to Slide Sorter view.

2. Select the slide(s) that you want included in the summary.

3. Click the Summary Slide button on the Slide Sorter toolbar.

PowerPoint creates the summary slide in front of the first slide selected. Move the summary slide to the end to close your presentation powerfully.