Custom Slide Shows, as indicated by their name itself, are Slide Shows customized by the user. The purpose of creating a Custom Slide Show is to
display only selected slides from your presentation, without deleting the slides you do not want to show. To understand a Custom Slide Show, think of
your individual slides as songs, then a Custom Slide Show is a playlist of those songs! Even better, since this is like a playlist, you do not have
to delete the slides that are not used. And there's more, you can create any number of Custom Slide Shows from a single presentation!
Follow these steps to learn how to create Custom Slide Show in PowerPoint 2010:
- Open the presentation in which you wish to create a Custom Slide Show.
- Access the Slide Show tab (shown highlighted in red within Figure 1) of the
Ribbon, and click the Custom Slide Show button, as shown
highlighted in blue within Figure 1. Within the drop-down menu that appears, click the
Custom Shows option, as shown highlighted in green within Figure 1.
Figure 1: Custom Shows option
- This brings up the Custom Shows dialog box, as shown in Figure 2. Note that the area on the left, highlighted
in blue is completely blank, that's because this particular presentation contains no Custom Slide Show yet. To create a
Custom Slide Show, click the New button, shown highlighted in red within
Figure 2.
Figure 2: Custom Shows dialog box
- This will open the Define Custom Show dialog box, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Define Custom Show dialog box
All the options within the Define Custom Show dialog box are explained below, as marked in
Figure 3, above:
A. Slide show name:
Here you can provide name for your Custom Slide Show. By default PowerPoint may just call this
Custom Show 1, but you can type in a new, more descriptive name.
B. Slides in presentation:
Shows a list of slides within the current presentation. To select slide(s), click the slide name(s).
C. Add:
This button adds the selected slides from the Slides in presentation area to the
Slides in custom show area. Note that unless you select some slides within the Slides in presentation area, the
Add button stays greyed out. Do note that you can also add the same slide more than once.
D. Remove:
This button removes selected slides from the Slides in custom show area. Note that unless you select a slide
within the Slides in custom show area, the Remove button stays greyed out.
E. Slides in custom show:
Once you add the slides, this area shows the list of slides within the current Custom Show.
Figure 4, below shows three slides added within Slides in custom show list (highlighted in
red), you can also see that we have changed the Custom Show name to 'Important Slides'.
Figure 4: Slides added within Slides in custom show list
F. Re-order:
The Up and Down buttons (highlighted in blue within
Figure 4, above) are active only when there are slides added within Slides in custom show list. Use the
Up and Down buttons to re-order the sequence of the selected slide(s).
Click the OK button to create the Custom Show.
- This brings you back to the Custom Shows dialog box, as shown in Figure 5. The Custom Show you just created can
be seen within this dialog box.
Figure 5: Custom Shows dialog box with the Custom Show listed
To preview the Custom Show, select it from the list and click the Show button, as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 5 above.
- Within the Custom Shows dialog box, you will find other buttons such as:
• New, to create more Custom Shows
• Edit, to edit a selected Custom Show
• Remove, to delete an existing, selected Custom Show, and
• Copy, to create a duplicated copy of the selected Custom Show. This option is very useful if you want to create similar
Custom Shows where only a few slides differ.
- Once you are happy with your Custom Show, click the Close button, highlighted in blue within
Figure 5.
- To play your Custom Show in PowerPoint, explore our
Playing Custom Shows in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.
See Also:
Creating Custom Slide Shows in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows
Creating Custom Slide Shows in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac
