We’ve all been there: You’re the last person to present at the meeting and you know you’ll never get through all the interesting fade-ins and carefully timed progressions you worked so hard on. You want to just click through to get to your points, but that’s a dead giveaway that you’re rushing your presentation. Here are a few graceful ways to eliminate animation overhead and save time in the process.

If your show uses a number of custom animation effects to add drama, you can temporarily disable them using the Set Up Show dialog box.

1. Choose Slide Show | Set Up Show from the main menu to open the Set Up Show dialog box.
2. As shown in Figure A, select the Show Without Animation check box in the Show Options panel (Show Type panel in PowerPoint 2000). This ensures that no animations will play during your presentation. You can re-enable them by deselecting the check box.

Similarly, if you originally allotted a certain amount of time to speak for each slide and are now planning on getting through as fast as you can, select the Manually option button in the Advance Slides panel. This requires you to click through or press the appropriate arrow key to progress through your presentation.

After you configure your slides for a more streamlined presentation, click OK to apply the changes. When you advance through the slide show, none of your animations will play and, with any luck, you’ll be able to cover all your topics in a condensed timeframe.

Filed under: Microsoft Office Tutor