Presentation mode

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I have created a PowerPoint 2003 document with notes. I would like to be able to make the presentation project just the slides on a screen at the meeting, but have my computer show both the slides and the notes on the computer screen as I run through the presentations. Is this possible?

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You’d have to have a graphics card that supports dual monitors, and connect two monitors. You can then set up the presentation to display the slide show on one monitor and the notes on the other.

See for example Run a presentation on two monitors and/or Dual monitors and PowerPoint (by Paul Iordanides) (and others).

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I’d rather see you make printouts of your Notes pages. Notes view shows exactly that — slide thumbnails and your own notes — but it allows for you to be more natural in front of your audience. It takes tremendous practice to not become glued and imprisoned to a monitor when you use it as your notes. (Have you ever seen anyone refer to their iPhones for their notes during a presentation? It is the worst form of Death by PowerPoint.)

Your audience will respond better, too. They tend to feel disconnected when they see you looking at a monitor; they wonder what you are seeing that they don’t get to see. They don’t have that same reaction when you refer to printed notes; they understand what that’s all about.

Your notes will never require configuring or malfunction, either…

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Rick – this make perfect sense. I look forward to reading your book.

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Hi Rick!

One more vote.

If you need to look at your notes often (or at all) you don’t know the presentation and you will look very stilted.

Practice!

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John, no argument from me on the need for practice, that’s for sure. But I wouldn’t want to see printed notes being dismissed out of hand, when the issue might be how people prepare their notes. If you write out your entire talk in your notes, you will indeed become stilted and robotic, as it is practically impossible to not read word for word complete sentences that are before you. (This tendency is responsible for speakers becoming drones when the bullets themselves contain complete sentences.) Properly created notes, with just high-level points and transitions, would not become such a barrier between presenter and audience.

I do prefer to go without notes if I know my material well enough. But I’d rather have simple, carefully-prepared notes by my side than risk forgetting what the heck I intend to say next…

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There is another solution. A get a Mac and do the presentation in Key Note. I discovered that Key Note, Apple’s version of PowerPoint, has a presentation feature that permits you to project your presentation on a screen for the audience, while on the Mac you see the slide on the screen the audience is viewing, the next slide coming up, and your notes below the slides. Also you see an elapsed time clock and a current time clock. I used this for the presentation and it went very smoothly.
Microsoft, please take note.

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Microsoft took note years ago: Presenter View, as it is called in PowerPoint, has been in the program for quite some time. This is not a question of technology; it is a question of human behavior. The risk is high — and I have witnessed the results first-hand — of presenters becoming robotic and detached when trying to create a relationship with a monitor in front of them. I’d rather they invest the energy in a relationship with their audience. Mac…PC…it makes no difference: It takes tremendous discipline to avoid getting derailed by the technology, however well-intentioned the design of the software.

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Microsoft took note years ago: Presenter View, as it is called in PowerPoint, has been in the program for quite some time. This is not a question of technology; it is a question of human behavior. The risk is high — and I have witnessed the results first-hand — of presenters becoming robotic and detached when trying to create a relationship with a monitor in front of them. I’d rather they invest the energy in a relationship with their audience. Mac…PC…it makes no difference: It takes tremendous discipline to avoid getting derailed by the technology, however well-intentioned the design of the software.

Rick, unless I am mistaken PowerPoint Presenter View requires 2 monitors. Key Note does not. Where do I find Presenter View in Power Point? I could only find a Help article, which made Presenter View look very cumbersome compared to Key Note.

I found Key Note presenter view very helpful and relieved the stress by having my notes in front of me on the monitor screen during my presentation. I rehearsed many times and I knew my stuff cold, but I never had to shuffle through papers to recall a point, or check a fact. I knew my points were always right there in front of me if I need them. I am sure using a teleprompter gives the speaker the same confidence. I suggest you go to an Apple Store and check this out. I think you will be blown away.
Again, Microsoft take note, or a Key Note.

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Rick, unless I am mistaken PowerPoint Presenter View requires 2 monitors. Key Note does not. Where do I find Presenter View in Power Point? I could only find a Help article, which made Presenter View look very cumbersome compared to Key Note.
…

I don’t understand this. You must configure the projector as a different “monitor” to your laptop screen if you want it to show something different.

Presentation view is incredibly easy to use and does exactly what you are asking for. You find it in the Slide Show tab of the ruler in Office 2007, and in the Slide Show menu in Office 2003.

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I don’t understand this. You must configure the projector as a different “monitor” to your laptop screen if you want it to show something different.

Presentation view is incredibly easy to use and does exactly what you are asking for. You find it in the Slide Show tab of the ruler in Office 2007, and in the Slide Show menu in Office 2003.

You must have a laptop that supports dual monitors. Mine does not, and most don’t. No such problem with the Mac. This is a screen shot from PowerPoint 2003, which I use. Note Multiple Monitors is grayed out.

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You must have a laptop that supports dual monitors. Mine does not, and most don’t.

If your laptop has a built in screen AND a VGA connector for the projector then it does support dual monitors.

You need to connect the projector to the VGA connector and then use display properties (from Control Panel) to configure it as a second monitor.

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You must have a laptop that supports dual monitors. Mine does not, and most don’t. No such problem with the Mac. This is a screen shot from PowerPoint 2003, which I use. Note Multiple Monitors is grayed out.

If you have a VGA connector to connect the projector to, your laptop does support dual monitors. And there will be a toggle function key where you can choose how the display capability is configured. And the Mac works the same basic way. I’ve used both. Unless your laptop is running Windows 95 or something of that era, you OS will support it as well – I have a 1998 Sony Vaio with Windows 98SE and I used it to do a number of presentations exactly the way you are describing.

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Jim

Nearly all newish laptops support multiple monitors. It’s probably greyed because there isn’t a second monitor connected or it’s not set up correctly.Having said that I would love (so much I wrote myself one) to have notes on my main screen while I practise also on the main screen.

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I am running Windows XP and using my LCD as monitor #2 and the LCD screen on my laptop as Monitor #1. I have changed the display settings in Control Panel (see below). Before making these changes I could simply plug my TV into the VGA connector on my laptop and see the application (PowerPoint) on both my laptop and the TV by toggling the F8 on my laptop keyboard. Now all I can see on the TV is a part of my laptop’s desktop. I can only see the application by toggling to my laptop. I can not uncheck Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor and get it to hold. Below you can see the way I have things setup in Control Panel- Display.

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It is getting really hard to understand what you are trying to do here. It sounds as though you have now correctly set your laptop up for using PowerPoint in presenter mode, and that you don’t want to do so any more.

Do you want to have the SAME display on the projector and your laptop or do you want to have different things on the laptop screen and the projector screen?

I am surprised that clearing “Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor” does not work for you, but you could try disconnecting the projector and rebooting the laptop to see if you that gets it back to how it used to behave.

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At last I have it working! I discovered I should first toggle the F8 key to the point where the screen on my laptop is normal (displaying my PowerPoint presentation in Normal view) and the screen on the TV (my second monitor) is displaying a portion of my desktop (just the Dell logo with a blue background). Then on my PowerPoint presentation go into Slide Show view (F5). Now the TV shows just my current slide and my laptop screen shows the slide and my notes. Just what I wanted. Selecting Slide Show view was the eureka moment.

Now my last question (maybe): Is it possible to increase the font size of the notes? My eye are aging.

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Now my last question (maybe): Is it possible to increase the font size of the notes? My eye are aging.

Select View | Master | Notes master.
You can set the font properties for each of the five outline levels. For example, set the font size to 18 points.
When done, close master view.

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Select View | Master | Notes master.
You can set the font properties for each of the five outline levels. For example, set the font size to 18 points.
When done, close master view.

Did that and it did not change anything. I changed all levels to 28 points and nothing changed

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No idea why not – it works for me…

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I was able to change the font size in Notes view, but when I go to Slide Show view in the dual monitor mode the font size on the laptop monitor is still small.
Is it possible to change the size of the slide that is showing on the laptop in the slide show dual monitor mode? The slide takes up 80% of the screen. I am more interested in seeing my notes. The slide is much less important. A much smaller image of the slide would give more room for the notes and perhaps they would be in a larger point size.

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The font size should be independent of the size of the image of the slide on the notes page. But you can move and resize the slide image in the Notes Master page.

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The font size should be independent of the size of the image of the slide on the notes page. But you can move and resize the slide image in the Notes Master page.

I tried that but it does not change the size of the slide image in the dual monitor slide show mode.

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I can’t test dual monitor mode at the moment; I hope that someone else will be able to help you.

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How about this:
– In dual monitor mode, switch to Normal view on your laptop screen.
– Drag the divider between the slide pane and the notes pane upwards, so that you have a reasonably large notes pane.
– Click in the notes pane.
– Set the Zoom percentage to 200 or so.

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How about this:
– In dual monitor mode, switch to Normal view on your laptop screen.
– Drag the divider between the slide pane and the notes pane upwards, so that you have a reasonably large notes pane.
– Click in the notes pane.
– Set the Zoom percentage to 200 or so.

That works great in Normal view, but unfortunately does not change the size of the slide or the point size of the notes in the Slide Show.
Hans, thanks for all your suggestions. I will keep working on it.

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I don’t have access to a computer running PowerPoint 2003 at the moment.

On PowerPoint 2007 there are zoom buttons just under the notes in presenter view, and these allow you to change the size of the displayed notes.

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On PowerPoint 2007 there are zoom buttons just under the notes in presenter view, and these allow you to change the size of the displayed notes.

It appears MS made some improvements in PowerPoint 2007. (I am using 2003.) But it still doesn’t come close to Apple’s Key Note. In presenter’s view in Key Note it is much easier to change font sizes. In addition in Key Note presenters view, on the laptop monitor you see not only the current slide being projected to the audience, but also the next slide, and of course the notes associated with the current slide. There is also an elapsed time and current time clock. If changing the resolution of the monitor really works (I did not try this), that is cumbersome and should not be necessary.

For anyone making presentations on a regular basis I suggest buying or borrowing a Mac. Thanks to everyone who chimed in on this thread. I am off to the Apple Store.

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In PowerPoint 2003, you can increase the font size in the notes panel in presenter view by clicking in it and scrolling the mouse wheel while holding down Ctrl on the keyboard. But unfortunately the font size is reset each time you move to another slide.

If you don’t use presenter view, you can switch to notes view on the laptop’s monitor. But unlike normal view, this is not synchronized with the slide show, which makes it more difficult to use.

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What if you changed (lowered) the display resolution on the primary monitor (or the one showing you your notes)? That should make everything larger.

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This wouldn’t be the first time that the impression was given that the tool makes the artist. I’ll keep tilting at this windmill…

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