Reading View in PowerPoint 2019 for Windows

PowerPoint 2019 for Windows comes with a bunch of different "views"—kind of like switching camera angles in a movie. Some views are your go-to stars, like Normal view (your everyday workbench) or Slide Show view (your red-carpet moment). But then there are the lesser-known backup dancers that don’t get much attention—and one of them is Reading view.

Reading view is similar to Slide Show view in some ways because, in both views, the slide is shown in full-screen mode. However, in Reading view, you also see the PowerPoint title bar and the Status Bar at the top and bottom of the interface respectively, as shown in Figure 1, below. Additionally, you can also view the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen (not shown in Figure 1).

Figure 1: Reading view in PowerPoint 2019 for Windows

Reading view helps you in quickly navigating through slides, and also allows easy access to the Windows taskbar at the same time to switch to other available open programs or windows. Also, Reading view is great for presentation designers who want to quickly look at their slides in full-screen mode and also be in sync with other applications running at the same time. Finally, if you have multiple displays, you can open two or more presentations in Reading view and compare slides without being distracted by the rest of the PowerPoint interface.

To access Reading view, select the View tab on the Ribbon, and click the Reading View button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Reading View button

Alternatively, you can also access Reading view from the View buttons on the right side of the Status Bar. Click the third button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below.

Figure 3: Reading view button on the Status bar

If you want to edit the presentation, you can always switch from Reading view to one of the other views using the view buttons that you can see towards right on the Status Bar. Additionally, you can press the Esc key to go back to the view you were using before you changed to Reading view.