Tips for Custom Shows in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Custom Shows can add a completely different dimension to your presentations, the same slides can be used for multiple Custom Shows and can help you decide what you want to show to any given audience. Creating and using Custom Shows is an advanced use of PowerPoint, here are some tips that will help you get more from this amazing feature in PowerPoint 2011:

Use the Same Slide More Than Once

What most of us do not realize is that the same slides can be used more than once in a Custom Show. This is great if you want the same slide to be shown multiple times in your Slide Show. Quick, which is the slide that can be repeated often in a presentation? Yes, the Agenda slide! Maybe you want your Agenda slide to show once after each topic on the agenda is covered. You can also repeat the slides other than the Agenda slide, maybe you want the same slide at the beginning and the end of the show?

So how do you add the same slide more than once? This is easy - just follow these steps:

Access the Define Custom Show dialog box as explained in our Creating Custom Slide Shows in PowerPoint 2011 tutorial. Select the slide that you want to repeat again within the list of slides on the left (Slides in presentation) of the Define Custom Show dialog box. As you can see in Figure 1, below, we have selected a slide named Agenda in the list on the left.

Figure 1: Custom show can have same slide more than once!
Then click the Add button more than once to add the selected slide repeatedly to the list of slides in the right (Slides in custom show), as shown in Figure 1, above.

Note: Once you add the selected slide to the list of slides in the right (Slides in custom show), you will find that the Add button will be greyed out, to add the same slide again, select it again and click the Add button. Repeat this process to add selected slide more than once.
You will end up with many copies of the same slide. Reorder them so that they are in the sequence you want using the Up and Down arrow keys on the right - again, learn more about this reordering of slides in our Creating Custom Slide Shows in PowerPoint 2011 tutorial.
Now when you want to change your Agenda slide, you only do it once, and all instances of this slide will get updated in your Custom Show.

Make Your Custom Show the Default Show

After creating a Custom Show, whenever you want to play your Custom Show, you play it via Custom Slide Show button in the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon. By chance if you forget that part and just play your presentation as usual by pressing the F5 Function key, then you will end up playing all slides!

To solve this problem, you can make your Custom Show the default show. This way you just play your slides using PowerPoint's buttons and keyboard shortcuts for playing slides, and your Custom Show plays! To learn how to set your Custom Show as your default show, refer to the second half of our Playing Custom Shows in PowerPoint 2011 tutorial.

And remember to change the default back from the Custom show to All (within the Set Up Show dialog box as explained in our Playing Custom Shows in PowerPoint 2011 tutorial). Otherwise you may open a deck a month or two later and wonder why only 5 of your 20 slides play!