PowerPoint for Techies: Create a Custom Show

Are you a linear thinker? I’m not. While I can keep myself linear enough to write articles and books, I always have other ideas that need to be processed. When I create a presentation, the same thing happens. I start with a nicely-organized outline and find I need to add content that doesn’t flow in a nice linear fashion.

Luckily, years ago l learned about a great PowerPoint feature called “Custom Shows.” This feature lets you create your slides in a linear PowerPoint presentation file, but work through them in a non-linear manner.

I am the queen of custom shows. I use them in every presentation. I use them to create FAQ slides. I use them to hide details. I use them to make quizzes work. I use them to make really cool effects. I use them to make the same presentation file work for many different audiences. You, too, can do all these things.

The implementation for custom shows in PowerPoint hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve been using it. You do Slide Show / Custom Show. You click the Create button. This dialog comes up:

(This dialog box shows a finished custom show. When the dialog first comes up on a new show, your slide titles are in the left column, the name is “Custom Show,” and nothing shows in the right column.)

You select the slides in the file that you want in the custom show. You click the Add button to add the slides to the custom show. You rearrange the slide order as you need to. You give the custom show a name. You save the custom show. You repeat as needed.

Tip: To use slides over and over without creating copies, add the slide to the custom show more than once. Move the copies up or down the list as you need to.

Easy as pie. Simple, clear, effective. And yet, expandable, too. Expandable? Yup.

• You can have a simple custom show that is just a re-ordering of slides. This is good for linking to subsets of material or for hiding details.
• You can have a custom show that uses the same slide (or slides) repeatedly with in the presentation.
• You can have a custom show that targets content for different audiences.

For the first two kinds of custom shows, you link to the show from other slides. When you run the presentation, clicking the link brings up the show. When the show is done, you return to the spot you started.

For the third kind of custom show, after you create your customs show, you set up the file to run the custom show whenever the file is run. To do this, go to Slide Show / Set up Show and set Show Slides to Custom Show. Select the name of your custom show from the drop down list. When you run the show, only the slides in the custom show (or those linked to by the custom show) will be available. Simple way to target your content to different audiences.

Play around with the custom shows. If you have a unique way to use them, let me know! If you want details on custom shows, check out the articles on my site!