Presenting Your Slideshow
Learn how to start a slide show, navigate slides during a presentation, use Presenter View, draw on slides, and use the laser pointer to guide your audience.
Lesson Notes
Read through the key concepts before you try the challenge.
Starting a Slide Show
When you're ready to present, PowerPoint offers several ways to start your slide show.
- From Beginning — starts the presentation from the first slide (F5).
- From Current Slide — starts from whichever slide is currently selected (Shift+F5).
- Custom Slide Show — presents a subset of slides in a custom order.
You can also click the Slide Show view button in the lower-right corner of the PowerPoint window to start from the current slide.
Navigating During a Presentation
During a slide show, you can advance slides using the mouse, arrow keys, spacebar, or Page Down. Go back with the left arrow key or Page Up.
Right-click anywhere during the presentation to access a shortcut menu with navigation options, including Go to Slide, which lets you jump directly to any slide.
Using Presenter View
Presenter View is a professional presenting mode that shows your slide on the audience's screen while you see a private view with the current slide, upcoming slide, speaker notes, and a timer.
Enable it by checking Use Presenter View on the Slide Show tab before starting.
Speaker Notes
Speaker notes appear in the Notes pane below each slide and are visible only to you in Presenter View. Use them to store reminders, talking points, or key statistics.
To add notes, click in the Notes pane at the bottom of Normal View and type your content.
You can also print speaker notes as handouts using File → Print → Notes Pages.
Using the Laser Pointer
During a slide show, you can simulate a laser pointer to draw your audience's attention to specific areas of a slide.
Hold Ctrl and press the left mouse button to activate the laser pointer. Move the mouse to point to any area on the slide.
Drawing on Slides During a Presentation
PowerPoint's Pen and Highlighter tools let you draw or annotate on slides during a presentation.
Right-click during the slide show, choose Pointer Options, and then select Pen or Highlighter.
At the end of the show, PowerPoint asks if you want to keep your ink annotations. You can keep them on the slides or discard them.
Hiding Slides
Sometimes you create slides with extra content that you only want to show if an audience member asks. Hidden slides stay in the file but are skipped automatically during the normal slide show.
Right-click a slide in the slide panel and select Hide Slide, or use the Hide Slide button on the Slide Show tab.
Hidden slides are indicated with a strikethrough number in the slide panel. To jump to a hidden slide during a presentation, type its number and press Enter.
Ending a Slide Show
Press Escape at any time to exit the slide show and return to the Normal editing view.
If you have reached the last slide, a black end screen appears. Press Escape or click the screen to exit.
Knowledge Check
What keyboard shortcut starts a slide show from the beginning?
What does Presenter View show that the audience screen does not?
Practice File
Download this file and follow along with the lesson.
Challenge
Apply what you've learned in this lesson.
Open the practice presentation and complete the following tasks:
- Add brief speaker notes to at least three slides.
- Hide the last slide in the presentation.
- Start the slide show From Beginning using F5.
- Advance through the first three slides using the spacebar.
- Right-click and use Go to Slide to jump directly to slide 5.
- Activate the Pen tool and circle one key item on the slide.
- Press E to erase your ink marks.
- Press Escape to exit the slide show.
- Confirm that the last slide is still hidden by checking the slide panel.