PowerPoint Tip – Playing a Presentation

After taking the time to create a top-notch presentation, there are multiple ways to play your presentation. One is to select the Slide Show View button in the bottom right corner of the window. For those who prefer using keyboard shortcuts, pressing F5 on your keyboard will also begin the presentation.

What if you want the presentation to begin immediately? When opening your presentation, the audience would see a preview because the default is to open in slide view. To avoid giving away important details too early, you can save your presentation as a PowerPoint Show in PowerPoint 2010 and 2013.

1. Open the presentation that you would like to convert to a PowerPoint Show.
2. On the File tab, select Save As.
3. Enter a file name for the presentation.
4. Click the Save As type drop-down arrow and select PowerPoint Show (.ppsx).
5. Click Save.

This file now appears in the folder with a PowerPoint Show icon and file extension (.ppsx). When opening the file, it will automatically run your presentation rather than show the slide view.