Weekly Computer Tip # 138
7 January 2006


set up a slide show to run continuously for an exhibition information booth
(Microsoft PowerPoint)

Welcome to 2006! Hope you all had a great festive season, full of the usual things that are bad for us! If you subscribed after 11 December you must have been wondering what happened to these weekly tips you signed up for. Well, I'm back into the Saturday routine, so let's get started with the first of this year's tips.

Let's assume you've made a New Year Resolution to man an information booth or kiosk in an exhibition area. When displaying your services at events it often isn't enough to have a well-put-together stand with glossy posters and cute freebies. As you're competing for the attention of the visitors, you might want to put together a PowerPoint presentation, explaining your products and services. With a simple change of settings, the slide show will run continuously.

Here's how:

  1. Create the presentation as normal, adding timings to the slides.
  2. Select the Slide Show, Set Up Show command.
  3. Click the "Loop continuously until 'Esc'" check box.
  4. Click the "Using timings, if present" radio button.
  5. Click the OK button.
  6. Save the presentation as normal. (If you want to quickly open a PowerPoint presentation as a slide show, you might want to save it as a PowerPoint Show (.pps) file; see tip_1_10.html#5.)

The presentation is now a self-running slide show that runs an electronic slide show over and over again, using your previously set timings, until you press ESC to stop the slide show. If the slide show does not include preset timings, you must advance the slides manually.

Finally, if you're looking for help to get to grips with the Microsoft Office tools and techniques you need to do your work, why not make a date in your brand spanking new 2006 diary and book a coaching or training session. OK, in theory I have plenty of other work, but in practice I'm always looking for a few more great clients!

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