Use Presenter view

PowerPoint is all about helping you give great presentations; and the Presenter view is all about helping you use PowerPoint.

Traditionally, the audience faces a screen showing your PowerPoint slides, and you stand in between the audience and screen, and change slides on a computer.

Unless you are a professional presenter, you may also have to juggle paper notes, or attempt to wing it by reading off your slides.

Presenter view lets you take advantage of the dual monitor capability of a computer to separate what the audience sees from the mechanics of running a slideshow.

The audience views your slides on the main screen, while you control the show with the Presenter view on another screen that only you can see.

The Presenter view is like a dashboard that contains in one window everything that you need to run your show.

You have your notes over here.

This monitor shows you what the audience sees minus transitions, effects, and videos.

And this monitor shows you what is coming up next.

You have all your tools here, which you can select out of view of the audience.

And you click here to move forward or back.

There is even a timer that starts when you begin your presentation, and a clock.

By running the Presenter view on a laptop, just below eye level, you can face the audience and never have to look back at the screen.

You can do things like select a Laser Pointer or drawing tool, or use the Slide Navigator to select a different slide.

And only you can see all this behind-the-scenes stuff, so the audience can stay focused on your message.

Presenter view also helps you stay focused.

All the controls are easy to get to in one window with big icons, and a simple design.

So, if you are interested, let's give the Presenter view a try.

In the next video, we'll set up a presentation.