Delivering a presentation is not just about giving good slides, it is also about making sure that our presentation finishes by the time our audience wants to have their tea break---so practicing how long to speak for each slide is essential for a proper presentation.

Rehearsing our Slides

Before we rehearse, make sure that we select our first slide. Now open the 'Slide Show' tab and click the 'Rehearse Timings' button.

rehearse_timing_btn

Powerpoint will start the usual presentation mode with a timer panel. The clock on the panel will start ticking once we enter the presentation mode.

rehearse_time_panel

Click on the arrow button to move on the next slide and Microsoft Powerpoint will record each timing as you progress from one slide to the next one. You can also click on the pause button just in case you need to answer the phone or turn off the oven while you're rehearsing your slides.

pause_recording

You will see a summary on how much time you have spent on each slide at the end of the rehearsal.

slide_timing

Create a Self-Running Presentation

You can even set a self-running power point slides and let it run according to these timing, relieving us from the need to manually navigate the slides. Bear in mind that we can run into a situation where Powerpoint changes the slides before we finish, so make sure that you can deliver each slide based on your rehearsal timing.

Click on the setup slide show button.

setup_slide_show_btn

Select the 'Browsed at a kiosk (full screen)' option to setup a self-running Powerpoint presentation. Press the 'esc' key to stop the self-running presentation.

setup_show

You can re-adjust the presentation timing by recording back from the beginning or from the current slide.

record_slide_shot

If we're still not happy with the timing, we can clear all the slides timing and redo our presentation rehearsal.

clear_timing

Delivering a good presentation is not an easy task and requires a lot of practice. There are tons of great things that we can do with Powerpoint to add punch to our presentation, for example:

What other tips do you have for giving an effective presentation?