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In order to get the audience’s attention, you may need to turn their eyes away from your PowerPoint slides. The best way to do this is to black out the screen. Just press the b key on your keyboard and the screen goes black. Now you can answer questions, go off on a tangent, tell a story, or whatever.
To get your slides back, just press the b key again.
Blacking out the screen is the best idea, especially when the room is dark, but you can also white out the screen. Use the w key instead. This works best when the room is light — then the white screen isn’t so bright.
Another technique that many people don’t know is to go directly to any slide. Just type the slide number and press Enter. How do you know the slide number? Read my tip on Creating a Slide List.
Need to return to the first slide immediately? Hold down both mouse buttons for 2 seconds, then release.
To go to the previous slide, press the p key, the PageUp key, the left, arrow, the up arrow, or the Backspace key. However, if you have animation on the slide, that only gets you to the previous animation step. That can be annoying, time-consuming, and less than professional. Instead, you can use a hyperlink.
What are the chances you’ve experienced the B key not working? This is, of course, one of my most beloved features. My latest presentation will not work…in slideshow the B key does nothing. Any troubleshooting tips?
This has never happened before. 2010-PC version. The only unique thing about the file is that it’s pretty large (35M) and has a lot built out in the notes pages. Those don’t seem related.
Lisa, I’ve never heard of that. Does it happens only with this presentation? What if you put the presentation on another computer? That would help you distinguish if the problem is the presentation or the computer.
The big advantage of pressing the B key is that it’s built in, so you can use it any time. When you press a key to carry on though, you do end up back on the slide you already showed, which is a snag if you already finished talking about it.
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What are the chances you’ve experienced the B key not working? This is, of course, one of my most beloved features. My latest presentation will not work…in slideshow the B key does nothing. Any troubleshooting tips?
This has never happened before. 2010-PC version. The only unique thing about the file is that it’s pretty large (35M) and has a lot built out in the notes pages. Those don’t seem related.
Lisa, I’ve never heard of that. Does it happens only with this presentation? What if you put the presentation on another computer? That would help you distinguish if the problem is the presentation or the computer.
The big advantage of pressing the B key is that it’s built in, so you can use it any time. When you press a key to carry on though, you do end up back on the slide you already showed, which is a snag if you already finished talking about it.
So, here are 3 novel ways you can hide your slide without having to go back to the same slide afterwards:
Black is back, but better – 3+ new ways to hide your slide
Instead of the p and w you can use the period and the comma.
Thanks it helped a lot