Slide Transition Timings in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

In a previous tutorial you learned how to add transitions to your slides and edit the transition duration (speed). In this tutorial we'll show you how to edit transition timings. Remember that transition duration and transition timings are not the same. Transition time is the actual time that the slide stays active during a slide show before moving on to the next slide. Transition duration is the amount of time it takes to move between slides. In previous versions of PowerPoint, duration was called speed.

Normally, during a Slide Show, you can advance to the next slide by clicking your mouse (or pressing the Enter key on your keyboard). Using transition timings on the other hand, you can set your slides to advance on their own instead, and display each slide for a specific amount of time that you decide. This option is useful for unattended presentations, such as at a trade show booth or even a picture slide show. Follow these steps to change the transition timings of slides in PowerPoint 2010 (we assume you have already added transitions to your slides and edited the transition duration, as required):

Navigate to the slide for which you want to modify the transition timing. Access the Transitions tab of the Ribbon, and within the Timing group locate the Advance Slide section (highlighted in red in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Advance Slide section within the Transitions tab

Within the Advance Slide section, you'll find two check-boxes (refer to Figure 1 above). The options associated with these check-boxes are explained below:
- On Mouse Click: Always selected by default, this option makes the slide advance to the next slide when you click the mouse.
- After: To specify the time for the slide to advance automatically, select the After check-box. Enter the amount of time into the associated text box, for which you want the slide to display. PowerPoint shows the time in seconds. You can type in the exact transition time you want, or use the up and down arrow buttons within the After box (highlighted in red Figure 2) to increase or decrease the transition timing. In this example, we will advance the slide automatically after 1 minute 30 seconds, or 01:30.00. You need not deselect the On Mouse Click check-box, since both the On Mouse Click and After options can be complementary to each other.
  
  Figure 2: Advancing the slide automatically
  
  Tip: PowerPoint uses the conventional minutes:seconds system, where 60 seconds equals a minute. So 01:30 translates to 1 minute, 30 seconds. But it uses the decimal system for part of a second. So, 01:30.50 refers to 1 minute, 30 and a half seconds (also known as 1 minute, 30 seconds, 50 centiseconds): each second thus has 100 centiseconds.
If you are happy with the transition timing, you can apply the same timing to all slides in your presentation by clicking the Apply To All button located within the Transitions tab (highlighted in red in Figure 3). A word of caution though: click Apply To All button only if you really want all slides to show for the same amount of time, as in 5 seconds for every slide that contains just one picture each.

Figure 3: Apply To All button within the Transitions tab

Tip: The Apply To All button can be used if there are no On Click animations applied to objects in your slides.
Save your presentation.