Presenter View: Your secret presentation tool

Presenter View is a secret view that’s only for you! It’s a way of seeing your notes and upcoming slides while your audience sees only the current slide as usual.

Here’s what Presenter View looks like.

What can you do with Presenter View?

As you can see, Presenter View has 3 panes: your slide, your notes, and the upcoming slide or animation. Plus there are several controls at the top and bottom. Here are some great Presenter View features:

• You can resize the panes by dragging on their border. For example, you might want to make the Notes pane larger and the Slide pane smaller
• At the bottom of the Notes pane, you can use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons (they look like the letter “A”) to get the Notes text just the size you want, so it’s easily readable.
• At the upper-left of the slide is a timer that keeps you on track.
• Beneath the slide, you have easy access to both forward and back navigation arrows.
• You can also access pen and pointer features by clicking the Pointer Options button below the slide.
• Beneath the slide, you see your current slide and the total number of slides.
• If you have an updated version of PowerPoint, you can edit your notes from within Presenter View. (This is a fairly new feature.)

Here are the controls you can use at the top:

• Show Taskbar displays the Windows taskbar so you can navigate outside of your presentation.
• Display Settings lets you swap which monitor or screen shows the Slide Show and which shows Presenter View. OR you can choose to show Slide Show on both monitors.

The Slide Show Display Menu below the slide gives you options that are similar to right-clicking in Slide Show view:

How do you set up Presenter View?

To use Presenter View, you need to be set up to use 2 monitors (but see my exception below). You need the following:

• The computer must have multiple monitor capability. I’ve never seen a laptop that didn’t, but some old desktop computers require two video cards.
• You may need to enable multiple monitor support by setting the display options. This is a Windows function and varies with your version of Windows. You can usually press the Windows key + P and choose one of the options. Most laptops also have an F key that sets this up. For example, you might press the Fn key and the F5 key together.

Go into PowerPoint and click the Slide Show tab. Check the Use Presenter View check box. Then go into Slide Show view by clicking the Slide Show view icon at the bottom of your screen or pressing F5 (to go to the 1st slide) or Shift+F5 (to go to the currently displayed slide).

The problem is, this may not work! The check box may be grayed out or you may get a message saying that you need two monitors. That’s because Presenter View is designed to be used with your computer plus a projector or second screen.

But wait! What if you don’t have a second monitor?

Presenter View is a great tool for presenting, but it’s also excellent for practicing. By the time you are ready to present, if you practice enough, you may not need your notes, but you’ll certainly need them for practicing.

The problem is that you usually don’t have a projector with you when you’re practicing (although practicing with a projector is a great idea).

It turns out that you can trick Windows into thinking you have 2 monitors and then you can display Presenter View on your computer. Use the keyboard shortcut I gave you earlier, Windows key + P, and choose Extend.

Now, go to your presentation and check the Use Presenter View check box.

Go into Slide Show view by clicking the Slide Show icon at the bottom of your screen and you should see Presenter View.

You can also try going into Slide Show view, right-clicking, and choosing Show Presenter View.

Let me know in the comments if this helps you with your practicing.