How To Use The Presenter View In PowerPoint With A Projector?

There are virtually no office productivity tools that come close to the PowerPoint for presentations – An effective and serviceable application for building and delivering presentations.

This application comes with lots of features to suit your purposes and one of those features includes the Presenter view.

This feature comes with great tools to give your presentation a great advantage and also helps fix common presentation mistakes like overrunning of time allotted for presentation, losing audiences’ attention, and so on.

If you want to take your presentation to a higher level and more engaging with this great tool, I will be excited to take you through a step-by-step guide on how to use the presenter view in PowerPoint with a projector.

What is the Presenter View?

The Presenter view was introduced in PowerPoint 2010 as a functional extension that gives you a private view on your laptop or computer during PowerPoint presentations while the audience sees the presentation on a screen.

The Presenter view is suitable for multiple display setups and it comes with basic tools to make your presentation easier. These tools include:

• Speakers note for you to put down key points and other ideas for your presentation while the audience sees the slides only.
• A Timekeeping tool to help you keep track of your time and avoid overrunning of time during the presentation.
• Drawing tools such as the annotation pen, laser pointer, or highlighter tool to draw attention to specific places in your slides and for better elucidation.
• A Thumbnail icon to see slides and jump through slides easily during the presentation.

How to Use A Presenter View in PowerPoint?

To set up the Presenter view, you should have your second screen available, like your monitor or a projector or you will not see the presenter view even if it is enabled.

If you are making a presentation in a large setting, then it will be suitable to use a projector to project your slides.

To connect your computer to your projector, you:

• Power off the computer and projector.
• Connect the VGA cable to the VGA port in your laptop and the projector. If your computer and projector have an HDMI port, then connect your computer to your projector using an HDMI cable.

Using a VGA cable will only transport pictures and not sound; unlike the HDMI that transports pictures and sounds, so you will have to connect your speaker to your computer headphone jack using an aux cord. However, if your device supports HDMI, then all you have to do is connect the HDMI cable from your computer to the projector.

External speakers or a high-quality audio system can be used in place of the projector speaker or in situations where the projector does not have an internal speaker.

• Plug the projector into an electrical outlet.
• Power on your computer and projector.
• Set up your projector. If the projector has multiple outputs, then you’d have to go into the exact input menu or press the button to make sure you’re on the correct setting in order to see your presentation showing on the screen.
• Go to the display option on your Windows computer, click on “project” and extend your display in order to have an additional view.

To enable the Presenter view, you:

• Go to the ribbon tab and click on Slideshow.
• Click on “use Presenter View” in the slideshow to enable it.

• Select which monitor to display the presenter view.
• To start the presenter view, select “from the beginning” or press F5. Now one screen will have the presenter view while the other screen will have the audience’s view.

Utilizing the Presenter View

Navigating your way around the presenter view is easy so you do not have to worry about confusing features.

The top left part of the screen shows the slide you are working on while the top right shows the preview of the next slide in your presentation. The bottom left consists of controls and a next and previous slide arrow and finally, the bottom right contains the speaker’s note.

Some of the features and options in the Presenters view includes the:

• Show Taskbar allows you to switch to another activity without interrupting your slideshow.
• Display settings include two options, that is the “Swap Presenter View and slide show” and “Duplicate slide show”. The Swap Presenter View is to switch the screen that has the presenter view and the slideshow presentation, while the Duplicate slide show is to present your slideshow on both screens.
• End Slideshow which is used to end the presentation. You can also use the escape key to end the slideshow.
• Speaker Notes are used to write down your key points or ideas and have them in front of you on your screen instead of writing it down on a piece of paper.
• Drawing Tools includes the annotation pen to help you draw on the screen, the laser pointer to point on the screen. The drawing tools are perfect for drawing attention to specific points or areas of concentration and can be erased after usage.
• The Timer is on the left, starts timing as soon as the slideshow begins, and shows the amount of time you’ve spent on a slide. You can pause it or readjust it by clicking on the two icons next to it.
• The Current Time is located on the right and is used to help you pace your presentation in order to avoid overrunning your time.
• The Thumbnail icon is used to see all the slides in your presentation and to jump to another slide. This is great for switching and jumping through slides easily.
• The Font Icons are used to make the speaker notes larger or smaller.
• The Arrow icons next to the slide number enable you to go between slides.
• The magnifying glass icon is used to zoom in and out on a particular part of your slides.
• Screen icon that lets you make the screen temporarily black to draw attention to you. You can also use the B key to achieve this black screen and the W key for the white screen.

Conclusion

The presenter view is highly recommended as it gives you a privatized screen when giving a presentation using PowerPoint while the audience sees the presentation on the projector.

Its additional features give your presentation an overall improvement during the presentation and glue the attention of your audience to the presentation.

So you may want to try this tool out in your net presentation. Do you want to know more? Check this out: