Viewing Presentations

This page covers reading a presentation: moving between slides, zooming, hidden slides, and speaker notes. For how to open a file in the first place, see Opening a file.

Once a file is loaded, the active slide renders on the slide canvas in the centre, with a strip of thumbnails in the slides panel on the left.

Charts, tables, shapes, SmartArt, and media all render as live content, so you can select text on the slide and copy it like any web page.

Navigating slides

Move between slides in any of these ways:

• Slides panel - click any thumbnail on the left to jump straight to that slide.
• Arrow keys - with nothing selected on the canvas, press Left Arrow / Right Arrow to step to the previous / next slide.
• Status bar - the counter at the bottom left reads Slide x of y so you always know where you are.

The slides panel highlights the current slide with a coloured bar on its left edge.

Arrow keys do double duty

In edit mode the arrow keys nudge the selected element. They only change slides when nothing is selected. Press Escape first to deselect.

Zooming and fitting

The zoom controls sit at the right end of the status bar:

Control	What it does
Zoom out (minus button)	Decreases the zoom in steps.
Percentage button	Shows the current zoom level; click it to zoom to fit the available canvas area.
Zoom in (plus button)	Increases the zoom in steps.

You can also:

• Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) and scroll the mouse wheel over the canvas to zoom smoothly around the pointer.
• Use View tab > Zoom to Fit in the ribbon.
• Pinch to zoom on touch devices.

View modes

The status bar has three view buttons:

• Normal view - the standard layout with the slides panel, canvas, and inspector.
• Slide sorter - a full-screen grid of every slide.
• Slide show - starts a fullscreen presentation (see Presenting).

The slide sorter

The slide sorter is the best way to get an overview of a large deck:

1. Click Slide sorter in the status bar.
2. Browse the grid. When the deck has sections, slides are grouped under their section headings.
3. Double-click a slide to open it in normal view, or press Escape to close the sorter.

Inside the sorter you can also:

• Drag slides to reorder them (edit mode).
• Click to select, Shift-click to select a range, and right-click for slide actions (duplicate, hide, delete; see Managing slides).
• Zoom the thumbnails with the slider in the bottom toolbar, or press Ctrl + / Ctrl -.

Hidden slides

Slides marked as hidden stay in the file but are skipped during a slideshow.

• In the slides panel and sorter they appear dimmed with a diagonal hatch pattern and an eye-off icon.
• You can still open, read, and edit a hidden slide normally.
• To hide or unhide slides, right-click them in the slide sorter and choose Hide Slides or Show Slides (edit mode).

Reading speaker notes

1. Click the Notes button in the status bar to open the notes panel below the canvas.
2. The current slide's speaker notes appear there; scroll if they are long.
3. Click Notes again to close the panel.

During a slideshow, notes are shown to you (not the audience) in presenter view; see Presenting.

Next

• Make changes to slides: Editing Slides
• Run a slideshow: Presenting