Tip #78 - PowerPoint Show

100 Computer Tips in 100 Days

Tip #78 - PowerPoint Show

The next time you create a PowerPoint presentation (.pptx) consider saving it one last time as a PowerPoint Show (.ppsx). The advantage of a PowerPoint Show is that when you double click on the file, it opens immediately into the show view and you will not need to manually turn on the slide show. Now on the face of it that doesn't seem like much of an advantage but here’s the important thing to consider, anyone double clicking on the file would be in the slide show view. So if you were to attach your PowerPoint Show to an email, the file would open and run when the recipient double clicked on it, even if they didn't have PowerPoint on their computer.

To get the greatest impact from this you should add timings to your presentation so it runs automatically or somehow let the viewer know that they have to click to move through the show. You can accomplish this by adding back/forward arrows or just adding a note on the first slide telling the viewer to click to advance through the presentation. Any animations or transitions you added to the show would still be active.  You can get really fancy and add a voiceover to the presentation.

PowerPoint Shows are particularly popular around the holidays showing snowy scenes indicating when you need to click to view the lights going on in the house or to click on the reindeer’s nose to see it light up, etc. These files are generally a PowerPoint Show.