Jumping to a specific slide in PowerPoint (without letting your audience see you doing it)

We’ve all been in PowerPoint meetings where the presenter is projecting onto a screen and using the Presenter view to see the current slide and the next one coming up. Someone asks a question, and they want to show a different slide to address the point. So, they drop out of presenter mode or they start rapidly scrolling through the upcoming slides (and then back to the original slide) to find what they want. It gets the job done, but it doesn’t look very professional. Here’s a way to skip to a slide of your choice without the audience getting vertigo from all the scrolling…

I have my computer set up to display the slides on a different monitor or on a projector, and to show me the Speaker View format on my computer. To start the presentation, click on the Screen icon in the lower right corner:

In my Speaker View format, I see the main slide being displayed, along with a smaller image of the next slide to be shown when I advance the presentation. I also see an icon that will show me ALL the slides in the presentation, while still showing the main slide on the projector or second monitor:

When I click that icon, I see all the slides, and I can click on any specific slide to have it show up on the projector or second monitor without having to scroll back and forth. The viewers don’t see any of this:

Voila! I skipped to the next-to-last slide and it’s now the one that the audience sees, just as if that was the next slide to come up:

When I want to go back to my previous slide, I can click that icon again, find my previous slide, and click it to make it show up to the audience. This process makes your presentation look much more professional, and is more visually appealing to your audience.