Black out the screen and other delivery tips

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.