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About this lesson

“Practice makes perfect” – so rehearse your slides and practice the delivery of your presentation.

Lesson versions

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2010, 2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the PowerPoint presentation used in the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Rehearsing Slides.pptx
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Quick reference

Topic

Rehearsing and practicing your slides.

When to use

Before delivering a presentation.

Instructions

  • On the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click Rehearse Timings – to rehearse the presentation and record timings.
  • On the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click the arrow below the Record Slide Show[11] [GM2]  button – to record timings, narrations and laser or ink pointer movements.
  • Slide timings and orations can be cleared from the presentation using the arrow below the Record Slide Show button.

Note:

Make sure you save the presentation before you record a slide show or rehearse timings as your previous orations and timings will be overwritten.

 [11]Should this be “Record Slide Show”?

 

Also, by the way, Glen, it seems from looking at the Microsoft pages that it’s “slide show” rather than “slideshow” (in all discussions, not just commands).

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  • 00:03 Before you deliver your presentation to the audience, it’s so important that your practice, practice, practice, and practice with as much
  • 00:11 time as you have available, and within PowerPoint there are some options that are available that can help you rehearse your
  • 00:16 slideshow as well as other options and features. On the slideshow tab we have the set up show button which launches the appropriate dialog
  • 00:24 box which is the subject of another video. There is also the option to rehearse timings and it’s well worth having a look at. If you click on it, it’s
  • 00:32 a way that you can deliver your presentation, to practice it, as well as to get the timings for slides. And as you advance through your
  • 00:40 presentation it will give you the total time when you end it. Now please note that no sound is being recorded while you do this and no video is
  • 00:47 being created. It’s just the slide and the animation timings that are being recorded. So let’s go into it and we can look at the buttons on
  • 00:56 the toolbar. Now note the little button to advance the slide, or you can just click on the slide. Pause the recording, the slide time, as well as
  • 01:07 over here the total presentation time, based on where you currently are in the rehearsal, as well as the repeat slide option. When your slides are
  • 01:15 done or when you press the ESC key to end the rehearsal, you’re given the option to keep those timings for your whole slideshow. I click yes,
  • 01:24 and let’s go to slide sorter view and we can look at the timings that are available for that presentation. Also remember that when you
  • 01:34 rehearse your presentation, the timings are overwritten each time, so if you want to keep previous timings, you must save your
  • 01:40 presentation with a new name. Also remember, and it’s very, very important, you must remove those timings when you need to use those
  • 01:48 slides in front of a live audience, because otherwise the speaker may be on a particular slide and the slides themselves may move off to
  • 01:56 another slide, causing a bit of an embarrassing goof up. I’ve seen it happen. Another option is to actually record the slideshow and here you have
  • 02:05 the option to commence recording from the beginning of the presentation, or from the current slide. The difference between rehearsing the
  • 02:14 timings and recording a slideshow is that when you rehearse the timings you only save the slide and animation timings but when you record a
  • 02:22 slideshow, you do those as well as recording the narration plus any laser pointer activity. Now this laser pointer activity is actually what you do with
  • 02:31 PowerPoint’s built-in laser pointer and of course not anything that you do with an external laser pointer. So we start the recording, the
  • 02:39 presentation runs and the information is recorded and that's very useful so on slide 2 we talk about databases and support for decision
  • 02:48 making, et cetera, then we move to the chart of performance upgrades and a SmartArt diagram about the future and that all gets recorded.
  • 02:58 Notice how that PowerPoint has these icons on slides now that we’ve exited so when I go back to normal view we can see that each icon
  • 03:09 represents effectively a very small sound file. And we can see the sound timeline and we can play that if we wish, and we can get some
  • 03:19 sound back from that file replaying back to us some of the audio that was just captured. So in summary, it’s so important to rehearse your
  • 03:26 presentation. It’s even useful to record your presentation with your audio and listen to yourself to see if you can learn anything about
  • 03:34 how you present. You may focus on particular words that you wish you didn’t say, such as cool, and it’s only through practice and listening
  • 03:41 and watching that you learn how to present more effectively, as well as of course, feedback from the audience if people are kind enough to
  • 03:49 do that to you. The confidence that you will gain will allow you to pace your presentation, to know what information you’re presenting, as well as to
  • 03:56 handle interruptions and possible questions, and practice will give you so much confidence and some of these controls in PowerPoint are
  • 04:03 perfect to help you to get that practice and gain that confidence.

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