The presenters who seem to know every slide by heart are usually reading Presenter View. It shows your notes, a timer and what's coming next, while the audience only sees the slide.
Alt+F5
Step by step
- Open your presentation.
- Press Alt+F5 to start in Presenter View.
- Move through slides with Page Down and Page Up.
- Press Esc to end the show.
Tips & troubleshooting
- Press B to black out the screen or W to turn it white when you want attention on you.
- Type a slide number and press Enter to jump straight to it.
What Presenter View shows you
- The current slide, exactly as the audience sees it.
- A preview of the next slide or animation step.
- Your speaker notes, with buttons to make the text larger or smaller.
- A timer and the current time. The timer can be paused or reset.
- Tools under the slide: pen and laser pointer, a grid of all slides, zoom, and a button to black out the audience's screen.
Set it up with two screens
- Connect the projector or second monitor and press Windows key+P. Choose Extend, not Duplicate. In Duplicate mode both screens show the same thing, and Presenter View can't work.
- On the Slide Show tab, tick Use Presenter View and choose which monitor shows the slides.
- If your notes appear on the big screen, click Display Settings at the top of Presenter View and choose Swap Presenter View and Slide Show.
Rehearse on one screen
Alt+F5 opens Presenter View even with no second display, which is the best way to practise. You see your notes and the clock exactly as you will on the day, and you can check that every note fits without scrolling.
Presenting in Teams
In a Teams meeting, sharing a deck with PowerPoint Live gives you the same thing inside the meeting window: notes and upcoming slides that only you can see. If you would rather run PowerPoint itself, share only the slide show window or the screen it is on, never the screen showing Presenter View.
In PowerPoint for Mac the shortcut is Option+Return.