Make a PowerPoint Presentation Play Automatically

Applies to: Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007

PowerPoint presentations can be designed to advance manually. Sometimes, when you complete your presentations, you may also need to automate them and set up the exact time duration for each slide. Then you can convert your PowerPoint presentations to DVD or video to play with the preset timing.

Nevertheless, how to set slide timing in automatic presentations?

There are three ways for you to choose.

1. • Do Transition settings in Animations tab,
2. • Set Rehearse Timings in Slide Show tab,
3. • Record Narration in Slide Show tab.

Using Transition settings in Animations tab

1. 1. Select the first slide to set the timing from the first slide.
2. 2. Tick on Automatically After in the Advance Slide group in Transitions tab.
3. 3. Enter or click the up and down button to determine the time how many seconds lapse before the next slide appears for current selected slide.

This is a precise approach to assign timings for each slide. However, the timings may not match to the speed you require. It may be too long or too short. You may need to test it around several times for a single slide. It is a time-consuming task to complete a large presentation with many slides.

You may be wondering to find another easy way. If you have PowerPoint 2003, you need to click Custom Animation from Slide Show menu. Then you are allowed to assign timing under the left working panel.

Using Rehearse Timings in Slide Show tab

1. 1. Open the presentation you want to set timings.
2. 2. Click Rehearse Timings in Set Up group from Slide Show tab.


3. 


4. When the slide show starts, you can find the Rehearsal toolbar.

 

1. Control the slide show displaying using the Rehearsal toolbar to time your presentation.
2. • Click Next to move to the next slide.
3. • Click Pause to stop recording the time temporarily.
4. • Click Pause again to restart timing after pausing.
5. • Click Repeat to restart recording the time for the current slide.
7. When the slide show ends and the timing settings completes, a message displays the total time for the presentation and prompts you to choose one of the following:
8. • Click Yes to save the recorded timings.
9. • Click No to discard the recorded timings.

If you choose Yes, Slide Sorter view would appear and display the recorded rehearse time of each slide in your presentation.

A self-running presentation is completed easily through rehearse timing feature in PowerPoint.
If you have PowerPoint 2003, it is almost the same. You just click Rehearse Timings in the Slide Show menu to enable the rehearsal toolbar.

Using Record Narration in Slide Show tab

Besides rehearse timings for your slides, you may also want to record narration for your presentation. Record Narration feature is a good choice to rehearse timings.

1. 1. Open the presentation you want to set timings.
2. 2. Click Record Narration in Set Up group from Slide Show tab.
   
   
3. 
5. 3. Begin to record narration and determine the timing for each slide.

After setting the timings, you make the presentation to be a self-running slide show. It can display without any clicks and attendance. Then you can convert your PowerPowerPoint presentation to DVD and play on TV according to your rehearsed timings.

 

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