Using Timings in a PowerPoint Presentation

You can set up a PowerPoint presentation to run as a stand alone piece automatically, which is useful for "poster" sessions at conferences. You, the presenter, do not need to be at the computer, clicking a button in order to advance the slides - it can do that by itself.

You need to do two things to allow PowerPoint to run by itself:

1. Set up a show to run automatically
2. Set the length of time each slide will appear on the screen

You may do these steps in either order.

Set up a show

Assuming you have PowerPoint running and have opened the presentation you want to run automatically,

1. From the menu bar, choose "Slide Show"
2. From the "Slide Show" menu, choose "Set Up Show"
3. In this dialog box, choose the option "Browsed at a kiosk (full screen)
4. In this same dialog box, make sure the option "Using timings, if present" is marked
5. Click the "OK" button

Set slide transition times

Assuming you have PowerPoint running and have opened the presentation you want to run automatically,

1. From the menu bar, choose "Slide Show"
2. From the "Slide Show menu, choose "Slide Transition"
3. Depending upon your version of PowerPoint, you should see a dialog box allowing you to choose the option (for the selected slide) to advance slide "on mouse click" or "Automatically after" and a field in which you can type the number of minutes and seconds to display the slide. You will need to do this for each slide. (Some versions of PowerPoint do allow you to apply to all slides, however.)