Rehearse Timings and Custom Slide Shows

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About this lesson

We will look at how to create a slide show using timings and a custom slide show. 

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ PowerPoint presentations from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

6.04-rehearse-timings-custom-show Exercise.docx
54.9 KB 6.04-rehearse-timings-custom-show Exercise Solution.docx
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Quick reference

Rehearse Timings and Custom Slide Shows

In this lesson we are going to learn how to run a presentation automatically using Timings and create a Custom Slide Show. Timings allow the presentation to run without any intervention. This is perfect when we need the presentation to cycle through slides automatically. Custom Slide Shows allow us to select a range of slides and set them up a separate slide show that runs independently from the main slide show. 

When to use

We use timings in the presentation whenever we want it to run automatically with no intervention. 

Instructions

Rehearse Timings

  1. From the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click Rehearse Timings.
  2. Notice the timer in the corner.
  3. When the timer reaches 5 seconds, move to the next slide.
  4. Repeat this process moving to the next slide in 5 second intervals.
  5. Click the close button on the timer.
  6. Click Yes to save slide timings.

Set up Custom Slide Show

  1. From the Slide Show tab, in the Start Slide Show group, click Custom Slide Show and Custom Shows.
  2. Click New.
  3. Name the custom slide show ‘your name Intro’.
  4. Select Slides 1-3 and click Add.
  5. Click OK and Close.
  6. From the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click Set Up Slide Show.
  7. In the Show slides area, click Custom show.
  8. Select the custom show from the drop-down.
  9. In the Advance slides area, click Using timings, if present.
  10. Click OK.
  11. Press F5 to run the custom slide show.
  12. From the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click Set Up Slide Show. 
  13. Select Loop continuously until 'ESC'.
  14. Press F5 to run. 

Remove Custom Slide Show

  1. From the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click Set Up Slide Show.
  2. In the Show slides area, click All.
  3. Click OK.

Hints & tips

  • To remove slide timings, remove the tick from the Use Timings box in the Set Up group on the Slide Show tab. 
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  • 00:04 I mentioned in the last lesson that if you're going to set up your slideshow to
  • 00:08 automatically run and cycle through all the slides without any intervention
  • 00:13 from you by the way of clicking the mouse or using the arrow keys on your keyboard.
  • 00:18 Then you're going to need to use a feature called Rehearse Timings.
  • 00:22 And what this basically does, is it allows you to run through your presentation.
  • 00:27 It will time how long you spend on each slide.
  • 00:30 And then when you play your slideshow, it will automatically move on to the next
  • 00:35 slide based on the timings contained within the presentation.
  • 00:39 So let's take a look at how this option works.
  • 00:42 So on that Slideshow tab in the setup group in the middle,
  • 00:46 we have a button called Rehearse Timings.
  • 00:49 And immediately, this is going to jump you into your presentation.
  • 00:53 And what you'll notice is in the top left hand corner,
  • 00:57 we have a little recorder running.
  • 00:59 And this is basically recording how long I'm spending on each slide.
  • 01:04 So this is a really great little feature if you want to practice your
  • 01:08 presentation if you want the slides to move on automatically.
  • 01:12 And again, if you are planning to display these slides at some kind of trade show or
  • 01:17 event, and you just want them to cycle through every five to seven seconds,
  • 01:22 you can do that from here as well.
  • 01:24 Now whilst I've been talking, we're now up to 46 seconds for this particular slide.
  • 01:30 So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to close out of here, and
  • 01:34 I'm going to say that No, I don't want to save these timings.
  • 01:38 Now let's do this again and work on that principle.
  • 01:41 I'm going to be showing this at a live event.
  • 01:43 And I want this presentation to be on one of the big screens and
  • 01:48 I wanted to cycle through each slide every 5 seconds.
  • 01:52 So let's click Rehearse Timings.
  • 01:55 I'm going to keep my eye on that counter in the corner, and when it gets to
  • 02:00 five seconds, I'm basically going to move on to that next slide.
  • 02:05 I'm going to let that one run for five seconds as well, and
  • 02:08 then move on to the next slide.
  • 02:15 So on and so forth.
  • 02:18 So hopefully you get this idea.
  • 02:20 I'm not going to go through the entire presentation,
  • 02:22 because that would take quite a while.
  • 02:23 Once you've finished, you can then just click on the cross in the top corner to
  • 02:28 close down that recorder.
  • 02:30 And PowerPoint will ask you if you want to save these timings.
  • 02:34 So in this case, I'm going to say, Yes.
  • 02:37 So now what this means is that if I run this slideshow and
  • 02:40 I'm just going to run this by pressing F5 I don't need to do anything.
  • 02:46 You'll notice that in five seconds time,
  • 02:48 this presentation is automatically going to move on to the next slide.
  • 02:52 Like it has done there.
  • 02:54 So Rehearse Timings is a really nice quick way to give your presentation
  • 02:59 a life of its own.
  • 03:01 Let's Esc to come out of that.
  • 03:04 Now another thing that you might want to do is set up your own custom slideshow.
  • 03:08 And again, this is particularly good if you want to maybe just run certain parts
  • 03:13 of your presentation.
  • 03:14 And a good example I would give for this is that a lot of times when I am training.
  • 03:19 Whilst I'm waiting for all of the people to come into the classroom before I start
  • 03:24 my presentation, I like to have three or four sides for cycling round.
  • 03:29 Which gives them something interesting to look at or read.
  • 03:33 So I might have one slide that has some kind of inspirational quotes.
  • 03:37 Maybe another slide that poses a question for them to think about.
  • 03:41 And maybe another slide which has my contact details on it.
  • 03:46 So just gives your audience something to occupy their mind with prior to
  • 03:50 your presentation starting.
  • 03:52 So if you have that kind of scenario, you can set up your own custom slideshow if
  • 03:56 you just want specific slides to cycle through.
  • 04:00 So I'm going to say that I want these first three slides to be there on little
  • 04:04 custom slideshow.
  • 04:06 So for this, I just jump up to the Custom slideshow button,
  • 04:10 select Custom shows, and I'm going to say I want a new show.
  • 04:14 I need to give my custom slideshow a name.
  • 04:16 So I'm going to call this Deb intro, and
  • 04:19 then I can select the slides I want to add to this custom slideshow.
  • 04:25 So I'm going to select the first three slides and
  • 04:28 click on Add to move them into the right hand side.
  • 04:31 Let's click on OK and Close.
  • 04:35 So now that I have set up custom slideshow and
  • 04:38 this tell PowerPoint that that is what I want to use.
  • 04:41 If I don't specify that I want to use the custom slideshow is basically going to run
  • 04:46 through my entire presentation as normal.
  • 04:48 So to do this, we go back into setup slideshow.
  • 04:51 And over in this show slides area, instead of having all selected,
  • 04:56 I'm going to say custom show and you can then select your show from the drop down.
  • 05:01 Now, I only have one in here.
  • 05:02 So I'm going to select Deb's intro, click on OK.
  • 05:05 And now when I press F5 to run my presentation,
  • 05:09 it's still going to use those timings.
  • 05:12 So those five second time ends, but
  • 05:14 it's only going to show those first three slides.
  • 05:18 So we're going to move on to the third slide now.
  • 05:24 And you should see that once this one is finished,
  • 05:27 it's going to exit out of that slideshow.
  • 05:29 And there we go.
  • 05:31 Now, of course, if I wanted this to carry on looping around,
  • 05:35 I could go back into setup slide show, unselect loop continuously until Esc.
  • 05:42 So let's play this one more time.
  • 05:48 We're going to cycle through those five second timings.
  • 05:52 And then what should happen after this slide is it should loop back around
  • 05:57 to that title slide, which it does.
  • 05:59 Esc to come out of there.
  • 06:02 So that is how you can set up a slideshow to run automatically
  • 06:06 using Rehearse Timings, and also how you can create your own custom slideshow.
  • 06:11 And one more point to mention here,
  • 06:12 because this is something that tends to catch people out.
  • 06:15 If you have set up a custom slideshow and you then want to go back to just running
  • 06:20 all of your slides, you need to make sure you jump back into setup slideshow and
  • 06:25 set this option back to all and click on OK.
  • 06:28 That's it for now.
  • 06:29 I will see you in the next lesson.

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