Playing Custom Shows in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

After creating Custom Slide Shows, you would like to view them or present them to your audience. Of course you can access the Custom Shows dialog box, and then select a show and then choose to play it, but that's a long process indeed. In this tutorial, we will show how you can access the same Custom Show more easily. And, then we will also show you how you can set any custom show as the default within a presentation. This means that when you play your presentation in Slide Show view, only the slides within the custom show you selected will be shown!

Follow these steps to play a custom slide show in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows:

1. Open the presentation within which you have created the custom slide show.
2. Access the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 1, below. And, then click the Custom Slide Show button, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 1.
3. 
   Figure 1: Custom Slide Show button
3. Doing so brings up the Custom Slide Show drop-down menu, as shown in Figure 2, below. Here you can see the list of all Custom Shows created, we created one Custom Show that we named Important Slides. You can see this listed within the Custom Slide Show drop-down menu, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 2.
4. 
   Figure 2: Custom Slide Show drop-down menu
4. Click the name of the custom slide show to play it.

Here's an alternative option that lets you set any custom show as the default slide show:

1. Access the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon, and click the Set Up Slide Show button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 3, below.
2. 
   Figure 3: Set Up Slide Show button
2. Doing so opens the Set Up Show dialog box, as shown in Figure 4, below. Here, select the Custom show radio button, as shown highlighted in red within Figure 4.
3. 
   Figure 4: Set Up Show dialog box
3. Click the down-arrow, as shown highlighted in blue within Figure 4, above, to see the list of custom slide shows. Choose the custom slide show you want, and click the OK button.
4. The next time when you bring up Slide Show view, you'll see slides only from the custom show you selected earlier.

You can learn some tricks with Custom Slide Shows in our Tips for Custom Shows in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial.