10 Shortcuts for Delivering PowerPoint Presentations

We recently presented ten keyboard shortcuts that make creating presentations with Microsoft PowerPoint easier. Of course, there are also some tricks that help you deliver your presentation with Microsoft Power Point. Again, we chose our ten favorite shortcuts to run through presentations smoothly. The shortcuts apply to PowerPoint 2013 and 2016 and work if you select English as a language for PowerPoint. A nifty cheat sheet to print out and stick to your monitor makes sure you’ll always have our favorite keyboard shortcuts right in front of your eyes. It’s available to download in the right hand column.

Practice makes perfect! Have a test run through your presentation to check how much time you need for each slide. Chose the option rehearse timings in the tab slide show. To determine the timings press "T".

N, ENTER, PAGE DOWN, RIGHT ARROW, DOWN ARROW, or SPACEBAR – you have plenty of choices when it comes to proceeding with your presentation.

Your colleague John has a question regarding what you have said on the first slide? Press number + "ENTER" to show a specific slide.

Why always postpone discussions at the end of a presentation? Stop an automatic presentation for valuable input by pressing "S". Restart the presentation with the same shortcut.

This one is for perfectionists. Use the combination of "CTRL" + "H" to hide disturbing features.

Of course you can always go back to the computer task bar by hitting "CTRL" + "T".

The use of media makes your presentation more interesting. If your audience wants to discuss a video right away press "ALT" + "P" to switch between play or pause.

If a video is too loud or too quiet you can easily change the volume. Press "ALT" + "Up" increase the sound and "ALT" + "Down" to decrease it.

Psst… if you want no sound at all use the combination "ALT" + "U".

The last one is a real all-rounder. Press "SHIFT" + "F10" to show the shortcut menu and choose between a variety of functions.

No matter how illustrative and informative your presentation may be, it can be wise to turn your audience’s attention off the screen in order to trigger discussions. So here is our extra tip: If you press "B" or "W" the screen turns black and white respectively. The same shortcuts will bring you back to the presentation in no time.