Rehearsed timings

A rehearsal records how long each slide stays on screen while you practise. If you keep the result, each slide stores its time, and the slide show can move on by itself when a slide’s time is up.

Rehearse the presentation

1. Choose Slide Show › Set up and click the clock button (tooltip “Rehearse timings — present the deck, and how long each slide is up for becomes how long it stays up”).
2. The slide show starts on slide 1. At the bottom-left, a REHEARSING readout shows two clocks in minutes and seconds: the time on the current slide, then the total so far. When the slide has speaker notes, they appear just above it.
3. Present as you normally would, moving through slides and animations with clicks or keys.
4. When you’ve finished, press Esc or click End (Esc) at the bottom-right.
5. A dialog asks Keep these timings? and summarises what was recorded, for example “8 of 12 slides, 06:40 in total. Kept, the deck advances on its own when it is presented with timings on.” Choose:
   • Keep — store the times on the slides.
   • Discard — throw the rehearsal away. Slides keep any timings they already had.

How time is counted

• A slide’s time runs from when it arrives until you move to another slide. Time spent running its animations counts.
• If you go back to a slide, the extra time is added to what it already had in this rehearsal.
• The slide on screen when you end the rehearsal is counted too.
• Slides you didn’t reach in the rehearsal keep the timing they had before, or none.

If you end a rehearsal before any time is recorded, no dialog appears.

Keeping the timings is one undo step, named “Rehearsed timings”. The timings are saved in the file, where PowerPoint reads them as each slide’s “advance after” time.

Present with timings

When a presentation has timings, Slide Show › Set up has a button with the tooltip “Advance on the deck’s own timings”, followed by the total time of the slides that aren’t hidden. It is highlighted while it’s on.

• It’s on each time you open a presentation that has timings. Click it to turn it off or on again. The setting isn’t saved in the file.
• When it’s on, each slide in the slide show moves on by itself once its time is up. The show checks about once a second. You can still click or press a key to move on sooner.
• If a slide still has animation steps waiting when its time is up, they run one after another, about a second apart, before the slide moves on.
• The last slide stays on screen; the show doesn’t end by itself.
• Slides without a timing wait for a click.
• When it’s off, every slide waits for a click, as if the presentation had no timings.

When the presentation has no timings, the button is unavailable, with the tooltip “This deck has no timings — rehearse to make some”.

Clear the timings

1. Choose Slide Show › Set up and click the eraser button (tooltip “Clear the timings, so every slide waits for a click”).

Every slide’s timing is removed in one undo step, named “Clear timings”. When there are no timings, the button is unavailable, with the tooltip “This deck has no timings”.

Timings from PowerPoint files

Slide timings set in PowerPoint (“advance after” times) are read, shown in the total on the Advance on the deck’s own timings tooltip, and used in the slide show. They are kept when you save.