Have you ever presented a slide deck in a business meeting or classroom? If so, you’re familiar with the digital-age-old action of clicking on the screen or tapping the right arrow key on your keyboard to advance to the next slide. But, how well does that work in reverse?

Typical slide progression

Imagine you’re nearing the end of your 30-slide presentation and need to return to slide #14.  

You could try to:

• Rapidly tap the left arrow key until you land on the previous slide you’re looking for. Unfortunately, this can bore your audience as you interrupt your presentation to display every previous slide and animation they’ve already seen until you get to where you want to be. It’s even worse when you have to get back to the end of the presentation and repeat the process. 😧
  
  
• Exit Slide Show mode and return to the editor to scroll, select, and re-present the desired slide. Doing so may distract your audience by allowing them to see your backend process and presentation notes if they’re visible. Just like the first method, you’ll probably have to repeat this process to get back to the end of the presentation. 

If this sounds like you, don’t worry. PowerPoint has a simple feature that enables you to see all slides in the deck at-a-glance without disrupting the audience’s view of the current slide. From this view, you can jump to any slide throughout the deck without having to exit slide show mode and interrupt your presentation flow. You can access this feature from the Slide Show view, or Presenter view.

How to access Presenter view

Start your slide show.

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If you are using an external monitor or TV screen to present your slide deck, Presenter view should appear on one of your monitors automatically. If you’re presenting to an audience using your laptop screen or just one monitor, you can still view all slides at-a-glance without entering Presenter view.

See all slides from Presenter view

From Presenter view, click the See all slides button (icon with three tiles and a square).

A screen displaying all slides in your deck appears. Click any slide in view to jump directly to it.

See all slides from Slide Show view

Hover your cursor over the bottom-left corner of the screen to reveal presentation tools. Click the See all slides button (icon with three tiles and a square) and all slides will appear in one view.

Never rapidly tap the arrow key again

With all slides in view, you can navigate to any slide seamlessly and minimize delays in your presentation. While you're rapid tapping skills of the arrow key on your keyboard might be impressive, your audience will appreciate the direct jump to the slide you want to go back to. It's a true win-win situation.

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