Enhanced Presenter View in PowerPoint 2013

Editor’s note: The following post was written by PowerPoint MVP Geetesh Bajaj

Most presenters just cram their slides with text – you may have seen such slides often, characterized by so much text that they look like a Word document repurposed as a slide – or even worse, it may appear as someone just copied tons of data from an Excel sheet and put in on a single slide! Of course, each of the slides would receive awards for competing in a “Fill-up-your-slide” contest.

OK, there’s no such contest – yet there are entrants for such contests everywhere. So the question that needs to be asked is why do presenters assume that their slides need so much text? There are several answers – and most of these get repeated each time I ask this question in my training sessions:

1. Presenters are scared – yes, this is another form of stage fear. All that text on the slides keeps them reassured that there’s something they can hold on to in case they stumble. You must have seen many such presenters – typically these are the ones who look at their slides and read aloud to their audiences.

2. Presenters expect questions – this happens mainly in internal presentations where a presenter may expect some questions from their boss or other superiors. To combat these questions, they keep all sorts of supporting content available on their slides.

3. Presenters are not prepared – most presenters seldom practice. Or some presenters never create their own slides – someone else made it for them, and although they did want to study these slides before the actual presentation, they either had no time to do so or they just procrastinated until there was no time left!

Now before we proceed, this article is about a cool PowerPoint feature that can help all presenters who are in a soup because of the reasons we just discussed. However, presenters who are confident, well versed in their subjects, and prepared can also use this cool feature – that will make them awesome presenters!

This cool feature is called Presenter View, and it allows two different views to be shown in your laptop and the projected display – let us just call these Displays 1 and 2. Remember that we will use the terms Display 1 and Display 2 for the rest of this tutorial.

Typically Display 2 is either projected or connected to a large TV – and your audience sees this view. All they can see is full screen slides typical of PowerPoint’s Slide Show view – as shown in the sample slide you see towards the right half in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Dual display is not duplicated

Display 1 on the other hand shows PowerPoint’s Presenter View, as shown towards the left half in Figure 1. In PowerPoint 2013, the options available in this view have been completely revamped:

In previous versions of PowerPoint, you had to turn on this view manually – but PowerPoint 2013 auto detects if you have two displays available, and then turns on Presenter view.
Having said so, it’s still a great idea to ascertain whether Presenter View shows up on your laptop (Display 1) or projector (Display 2). In case it shows up on the wrong display, you can swap both displays – follow these steps:

1. In Presenter view, select the Display Settings option in the toolbar at the top (see Figure 2).

2. This brings up a small menu – choose the Swap Presenter View and Slide Show option (see Figure 2, again).

Figure 2: Swap your displays

If you are connected to only a single display and still want to emulate Presenter View, you can now do that from within Slide Show view. Place your cursor over the navigation icons on the bottom left area of the projected slide, as shown in Figure 3, below. Click the last icon to bring up a contextual menu -- choose the Show Presenter View option in this menu (see Figure 3 again).

 

Figure 3: Notice the contextual menu with the Show Presenter View option

Now that you have explored how you can bring up Presenter View, let us explore all the options available within this view, including the new options that allow you to zoom onto a specific part of your slide – or even pan across the slide area. Additionally, you now also have dedicated Pause, Resume and Restart buttons that provide you with a better control over your presentation timings.

Look at Figure 4, below – this shows a typical Presenter View screen.

Figure 4: Presenter View

Each of the individual elements in Presenter View is marked with a number in Figure 4, above -- and explained below.

1. Toolbar: Here you find three options:

a. Show Taskbar: This lets you see your Window taskbar. One click will make your taskbar available, and another will hide it again – so, this is a toggle option. This can be a useful option if you need to access any of your open applications. For example, you may have an Excel sheet open that you want to show to your audience – clicking this option will let you easily access the Excel sheet via the Windows taskbar.

b. Display Settings: Clicking this option brings up the menu shown earlier (see Figure 2). The topmost Swap Presenter and Slide Show option swaps your displays. You can also choose the Duplicate Slide Show option – this duplicates what you see on both displays – in effect, you no longer see Presenter View even though you are using two displays, as shown in Figure 5, below. You end up with Slide Show views on both your displays (compare with Figure 1).

Figure 5: Two instances of Slide Show view, and no Presenter view
Note: If you are only using a single display, these options will not be available.

c. End Slide Show: Exits your presentation.

2. Timer: This area shows the time elapsed since your Slide Show started. PowerPoint 2013 introduces two extra buttons for Pause/ Resume and Restart.

3. Slide Preview: This shows a smaller preview of the slide that’s shown in Slide Show view on Display 2.

4. Next Slide: Provides a preview of your next slide so that you know what’s coming up next.

5. Note: Displays notes (if there are any) for the current slide.

6. Extra Controls: These five controls are placed below the Slide Preview (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: Controls, explained from left to right

a. Pen and Laser Pointer tools: Click on this button to bring up a menu that lets you choose a pen or highlighter to annotate your slides – or even a mock laser pointer.

b. See All Slides: Shows your entire slide deck (see Figure 7) – only you see this view, and your audience continues seeing Slide Show view with one slide. You can choose any slide you want to show on Display 2 to your audience. This option quickly lets you get from your active slide to any other slide in your presentation.

Figure 7: All your slides

c. Zoom into the slide: Zoom on a part of your slide and then pan around.

d. Black or Un-black Slide Show: A toggle that lets you turn your Display 2 completely black so that the audience no longer sees any slides. Click again to un-black the screen.

e. More Slide Show Options: Bring up a drop-down list with several options that will help you manipulate your presentation’s delivery better.

7. Navigation: The Previous and Next buttons let you navigate back and forth your slides. The thin bar in between shows the progress of your slides on a live thermometer style strip, along with the slide number of the active slide.

8. Make Notes Larger or Smaller: These two buttons make the text in your Notes area larger or smaller.

Presenter View is one of those options in PowerPoint that you really won’t miss unless you play with it – thereafter, you will want to use it all the time because the level of control that this amazing option provides can help any presenter be more capable and confident.

However, this is one of those PowerPoint features that needs a fair amount of practice – so first play with this view alone or when you have a few friends or colleagues in the audience. Once you are more comfortable with Presenter View, you can then use it to present like a pro in front of a larger audience or even a smaller audience that may comprise your superiors, investors, or even complete strangers!

About the author

Geetesh Bajaj is an awarded Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for over a decade now. He has been designing and training with PowerPoint for 15 years and heads Indezine, a presentation design studio and content development organization based out of Hyderabad, India.

Geetesh believes that any PowerPoint presentation is a sum of its elements--these elements include abstract elements like concept, color, interactivity, and navigation--and also slide elements like shapes, graphics, charts, text, sound, video, and animation. He explains how these elements work together in his best-selling book Cutting Edge PowerPoint for Dummies--the book has several five-star ratings on Amazon.com. He has also authored three subsequent books on PowerPoint 2007 for Windows, and two on Microsoft Office for Mac.

About MVP Monday

The MVP Monday Series is created by Melissa Travers. In this series we work to provide readers with a guest post from an MVP every Monday. Melissa is a Community Program Manager, formerly known as MVP Lead, for Messaging and Collaboration (Exchange, Lync, Office 365 and SharePoint) and Microsoft Dynamics in the US. She began her career at Microsoft as an Exchange Support Engineer and has been working with the technical community in some capacity for almost a decade. In her spare time she enjoys going to the gym, shopping for handbags, watching period and fantasy dramas, and spending time with her children and miniature Dachshund. Melissa lives in North Carolina and works out of the Microsoft Charlotte office.

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 25, 2013
  This is really a great piece of information. Awesome article! I had no clue that MS PowerPoint 2013 is so good. I have been using 2010 but I would love to try this feature. Thank you for sharing this useful information with us Arpit authorSTREAM Team

• Anonymous
  July 02, 2013
  Neat features - love being able to see all my slides before showing them to the audience

• Anonymous
  August 04, 2013
  The slide sorter feature is okay, but I really preferred the slider that was available in presenter view for the past few versions. It would be nice to allow both versions in a later release.  Also, if I skip to a future slide using the sorter view, transition animations don't always work.

• Anonymous
  August 04, 2013
  One more issue: the Windows task bar will toggle on, but then it doesn't turn back off and it shows up on the extended display, which interrupts the slide show.  In older versions of Power Point, it was nice to be able to edit slide because you could see the task bar already.  This is the main reasons I have stayed with Power Point for presentations over other platforms, but without these features, I'm not sure if I will keep using it.

• Anonymous
  October 14, 2013
  I'm with you Karen . . . not having the ability to scroll hither and thither to select slides as in previous versions is, for me, at least, a good reason not to use this - the fact you have to go always to the top-right is a pain - esp. if you are showing it from say a 24/27" screen Also, the black background jars overmuch - Grey <RGB=200> would cut pretty much the same shine but be much less of a contrast pain. Its back to PPt 2010 for me. A pity, 'cos little of the rest offends.

• Anonymous
  October 20, 2013
  This is a step back from 2007 version. We bounce back and forth from slides throughout the presentation an seeing all the slide all the time in presenter view was much nicer. The new version is much slower and awkward to navigate.

  • Anonymous
    November 07, 2016
    I do the songs at church and the band might skip a slide or repeat a previous slide, so I always have to go back to the multiple slides view. I wish there was a way to keep it on that view or even a shortcut to it.

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2013
  Adorei o novo PowerPoint 2013, só acho que ainda falta um recurso de extrema necessidade, Animação para Tabelas, onde possamos, animar linha a linha e coluna a coluna... talvez na próxima versão...

• Anonymous
  October 25, 2013
  If you go to slide sorter on 2013 while presenting your notes are covered too, very hard to do a seamless presentation skipping back and forth when needed. I agree a big step back from 2007. Inserting an  mpeg quickly just doesn't work, you almost need to convert them to wmv ahead of time. Really hope the slider like in 2007 presenter view comes back at least as an option soon.

• Anonymous
  April 14, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 10, 2014
  For me this version of Presenter view is a disaster, all transitions are lost when selecting a differnet slide from All slides. Back to 2010 it is.

• Anonymous
  May 28, 2014
  There appears to be an issue in Office 2013 SP1 related to dual-monitors and duplicating the slideshow view. After the slide show ends and PowerPoint is closed, we discovered that the duplication of the screen was translated to Windows such that the desktop is then duplicated. This is not how the desktop was configured prior to the slideshow and presents an issue for users who do not want to have to reconfigure Windows just because they ran a PowerPoint presentation. Please advise. Thanks, Doug

• Anonymous
  September 24, 2014
  The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2016
    The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 27, 2014
  Thank you for your very clear explanation. However my presenter view does not display the slide in the slide preview view. Any suggestions to remedy this?

• Anonymous
  January 28, 2015
  I'm not impressed with the enhancements. Why can't I adjust the size/position of the 8 elements shown in Figure 4? In particular, I need a much larger "notes" (item 5) area, and I need it to be able to contain graphics. The printable notes view has been configurable for over a decade, but the Preseneter's View is stuck in the 20th century!

• Anonymous
  June 03, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  June 12, 2015
  I want to work off the "all slides" screen so I can go to any slide at any time.  However, as soon as I click a slide it goes back to the single view.  Is there a way to keep the "all slide view" up so I don't have to click on it every time?

• Anonymous
  June 19, 2015
  big step backward with the "enhanced" presenter view The horizontal scroll of ALL slides is a must for an truly adaptable script

• Anonymous
  September 05, 2015
  In presenter view when I go to a hyperlink in my presentation the hyperlink shows on my monitor but not the display that my audience sees . Otherwise presenter view works as it is supposed to. Any suggestions?

  • Anonymous
    August 14, 2017
    you have to press the displayed version for the hyperlink to open for your audience

• Anonymous
  September 09, 2015
  I need to know if ppt 2013 can be set as DEFAULT to open presentations in "duplicate view" automatically?  I'm a tech coach in an elementary school and when teachers switch from ppt back to their desktop, videos, etc. is disconnects the "cloning" setting to the projector.  Then they PANIC.  Thoughts?

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2016
    I am not a techie, but I do recall seeing an option to set a default upon opening (while I was scrambling to try to figure out how to change my PV display background from black to white). I think it was under PowerPoint > Options > Advanced > Display....Automatically extend display (or uncheck the block). I can't find your question now, so I hope that helps. :)

• Anonymous
  September 20, 2015
  Will Power point 2013 work on a Lenevo B50 lap top. My P. P.2010 is giving me problems.

• Anonymous
  October 10, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  October 24, 2015
  Not allowing me to swap (Figure 2) Presenter and Slide Show and when I do (Figure 3) I get presenter views on Laptop and projector screen Image

• Anonymous
  November 16, 2015
  hi.. i seems to have a problem to play video in presenter view in my microsoft 2013.. any help? reply at only--comelaidah@live.com.sg

• Anonymous
  November 17, 2015
  thank for this post. I am coming across another issue these days. I run all my power point from a show computer at the tech table. I place one 22" monitor next to the podium and one 55" confidence monitor on the floor for the presenter to see. we do not allow laptops at the podium. now my client is asking if there is a way to show presenter view on the 22" monitor and full screen view on the 55" monitor and the LCD projector? Has you come across this and is there a way to do that? please email me your response to narifav@gmail.com thanks, nadeem

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2016
  I am trying to figure out how to change the display background color in presenter view. On my old laptop, the PV screen on my end is white with black print, and my eye is drawn to it as I walk around the lectern so I don't look too distracted. On the new laptop with 2013, the PV screen display is black or dark gray, with white or light gray lettering and a bright Current Slide square, so my eye automatically goes to the slide and not to the Notes section (I've already "disappeared" the Next Slide option to give myself more Notes space, since I'm pretty near-sighted). Any hints on changing display options? I've hunted for hours.

• Anonymous
  April 06, 2016
  I like the Presenter View, but the clock is way too small. I wish there was a way of making it larger so I could actually see it from the stage where I'm presenting from. It's useless at it's current size.

• Anonymous
  May 06, 2016
  I am going mad with this new presenter view on powerpoint 2013 that I've reverted back to the old one. Why oh why is it not possible to be able to change it to black writing on a white screen and to be able to move the boxes around and to also see the row of slides coming up so you can quickly jump forward or skip one without having to click out of your script.. This version clearly wasn't developed by someone who is a trainer and who uses this for 7hrs at a go. Please allow us to change it around as my company has recently updated our laptops and won't allow us to put the old version back on but this version is just not workable for my job!!! its like taking away a pencil from an artist and saying to them.. "well we have biro's now and they are great so use them" Noooo! stop fiddling with things that don't need to be fixed please and if you do at least allow us to change it back to the version we like and need in order to do our jobs!

• Anonymous
  November 11, 2016
  This is great! i have issue with exrended mode. when i project to a projector, only powerpoint slides will be shown. when i open a link from the slide, it will show on laptop but not on projector screen. what do i do/

• Anonymous
  August 14, 2017
  i prefer the presenter view from previous version like most people have commented before.can't you just make it so that you can use the traditional view in 2016?