Tame your computer – hide that slide!

When running a PowerPoint (*) slide show, you may sometimes want to omit one or more slides, depending on your audience. Or perhaps you have some slides on ‘stand-by’, just in case you get a particular question and hey presto… here’s one I prepared earlier.

Well, the other day one of my trainers printed off the slides I had prepared for him and when we went through the presentation, it turned out he had printed off all slides, including the hidden ones. That inspired this tip…the extra step you need to take to stop hidden slides from being printed.

Here’s how:

1. Press CTRL + P.
2. Click on the Print All Slides drop-down arrow.
3. Click on Print Hidden Slides to deselect it.

By the way, I seem to remember that in previous versions of PowerPoint, step 2 wasn’t necessary as there was a Print Hidden Slides check box in the lower-right corner of the Print dialog box. But correct me if I’m wrong.

Finally, if you don’t know how to hide a slide and like the sound of it (perhaps because you don’t want to print all slides?!) simply right-click the slide that you want to hide in the Slides tab of Normal view and select Hide Slide. (If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, you can click on the Hide Slide button in the Set Up group on the Slide Shows tab.)

* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.

PS I’m committed to sharing the best of what I know with others so please don’t keep these tips a secret. If you enjoyed today’s tip, please forward it to anyone you feel may benefit or reprint it  (with full copyright and subscription information) in your newsletters and message boards. Got a tip to share? Submit it by emailing karen@roem.co.uk – if your tip is selected, I’ll publish it along with your name; the bragging rights will last a lifetime.