Display a quarter-size slide show view

Do you often switch back and forth between Normal and Slide Show views? I do. I want to see how that animation or slide transition will look and so I switch over to check. A better way is to display both views simultaneously. Yes, you can do that, by displaying Slide Show view at quarter-size.

That little slide show view really works, too. You can click on it to advance the slides, and press Esc to close it.

You won’t believe how easy it is to do this. Just press Ctrl as you click the Slide Show view icon That’s all there is to it! Then you can see both views at the same time.

Update: In PowerPoint 2013, press the Alt key with the Slide Show view icon. (If you press Ctrl, you get the Present Online dialog box.

Unfortunately, you can’t move the little Slide Show view and it does hide a good part of your working area, but it’s just a window, so as soon as you need to work in Normal view, click in that view and your Slide Show view disappears so that you can work.

But it isn’t gone; you’ve just minimized it and you can display it on top again by clicking its button on the Windows taskbar.

Even cooler, if you have a wide screen, you can make your Normal view window narrower and display both windows side by side. Then you have your cake and eat it too, easily going back and forth between the two views.

So, next time you want to check something in Slide Show view, instead of pressing F5 or Shift-F5 (which starts Slide Show view at the current slide), or clicking the Slide Show icon, press Ctrl and use that quarter-size view.