It's all in the delivery


Use keystroke shortcuts in Slide Show View

You're lazing on the couch, watching football, eating cheese puffs, and trying to understand John Madden's confusing play diagrams when you suddenly realize that an onscreen pen is exactly what you need to make your PowerPoint presentation come to life. You vaguely remember hearing about some such feature, but your team is losing (again) so you nod off before you can make a note to check PowerPoint's options.

You weren't dreaming—the pen is one of many keystroke shortcuts that you can use in Slide Show View to enhance your delivery. We'll discuss each of them individually, and then you can use the table at the end of this article as a handy reference.

Advance with ease

Before we get to that pen, let's start with ways to move through your presentation when you're in Slide Show View. To advance to the next slide, you can always click the left mouse button. But you can also press any of the following keys: Page Down, , , Enter, or Spacebar. To return to the previous slide, press Page Up, , or . To skip to the first slide, press Home. To skip to the last slide, press End. If you know the number of the slide you'd like to display, simply type that number and press Enter.

Fade to black (or white)

Ever wish you could temporarily replace your presentation with a blank screen while you answer a question or expound on a point? You can easily toggle between your presentation and a blank screen by pressing B for a black screen or W for a white screen. Then, when you're ready to return to your presentation, simply press the same key again, as with any other toggle function. This feature is also useful at the end of a presentation if you want to add a note of finality or direct the attention of your audience elsewhere.

Pointer pointers

Some people like to use the arrow pointer during a presentation to indicate what they're discussing. It's easy to make the pointer appear—simply press either A or =. Since this is another toggle function, you can simply press the key again to hide the pointer. However, remember that when the pointer is on the screen, the Slide Show menu button is also visible in the lower left corner of the screen.

Pen notes

At last we come to the feature that will let you live out your Madden sports fantasy of diagramming football plays on the screen. PowerPoint allows you to use the mouse as a pen so you can doodle all over your slides during your presentation. Just press Ctrl + P to magically transform the arrow pointer into a pen.

You can draw whatever you want, but most people use the pen primarily to circle or underline important items on the slide. Obviously, the mouse doesn't allow great control for drawing anything much more intricate than that. But please draw something relevant to your topic so you keep the focus on the presentation rather than on the latest PowerPoint tool.

None of the marks you make are permanent—whatever you draw will disappear when you move to the next slide. Or you can press E to erase your scribbling on the current slide.

If you want to make permanent notes that don't appear during the presentation but can be printed to act as cue cards during your delivery, you should create them before the presentation so that the audience isn't privy to all your lame jokes ahead of time. Again, use Slide Show View to perform this task. Simply right-click the screen and select Speaker Notes from the shortcut menu. Type your notes and click Close. The notes you type will show up in the Notes text box in Notes Page View in PowerPoint 97 and in the Notes pane in Normal View in PowerPoint 2000/2002. To print those notes, switch to Notes Page View.

You can change the pen tool back to an arrow pointer at any time by pressing Ctrl + A. In PowerPoint 97, the pen will switch back to an arrow pointer automatically when you advance to a new slide. However, in PowerPoint 2000/2002, you can keep the pen active by advancing with one of the shortcut keystrokes listed earlier in the Advance with Ease section.

Clash dismissed

Here's one more pen note (which is actually a mouse-button shortcut rather than a keystroke shortcut): If you detest the pen color or find it clashes with your presentation's Color Scheme, simply right-click the screen. Then select Pointer Options > Pen Color from the shortcut menu and select the color of your choice.

Escape route

The last keystroke shortcut is a fitting end to this article. You may already know that you can press S to pause an automatic show. But what can you do if your presentation is tanking and you need to end the show immediately? Just press Esc. And next time, get better jokes.
Dear Bindy,
My friend said you could switch to another presentation when you already have one open. Is he telling the truth? I sure waste a lot of time closing one presentation and opening another.
Regards,
Befuddled in Boise

Dear Befuddled,
You'll want to kick yourself when you realize how easy it is to switch between presentations. Open the first presentation as you would normally and then open a second presentation (or a third, etc.). Select Window from the menu and select the presentation you want to view from the drop-down list. Your friend didn't lie—this time anyway.

Dear Bindy,
I managed to insert a table on one of my slides, but now I want to get rid of a row since we changed our product line. I know it's not hard to do, but I can't remember how.
Thanks for your help,
Puzzled in Poughkeepsie

Dear Puzzled,
You're right—deleting a row is easy. First, you may need to double-click the table to edit it. Then select the row in question by clicking any cell in the row. In PowerPoint 97, select Table > Select Row from the menu and select Table > Delete Rows. In PowerPoint 2000/2002, click the Table button on the Tables and Borders toolbar and select Delete Rows from the menu.