In Part I of Using Animation in your PowerPoint Presentations, I introduced you to simple slide transitions. The slide transitions let you control how PowerPoint moves from one slide to another during a presentation. The default is that the next slide appears when you click the mouse.

Transition Timings

Normally you would move from slide to slide in a PowerPoint presentation by clicking the mouse button. An alternative is to configure PowerPoint to advance to the next slide after a specific amount of time. For example, you can have PowerPoint progress to the next slide after 2 minutes elapses.

To configure automatic timings:

1. Open up your presentation and switch to Normal view.
2. Select the slides to which you want to apply automatic transitions. From the Slide Show menu, click Slide Transitions.
3. Under the Advance slide section, click the Automatically after option and use the arrows to specify the amount of time before moving to the next slide.
4. You can apply the automatic timing to all slides in your presentation by clicking the Apply to All Slides button.

Rehearsing Transition Timings

The question you are likely asking now is ‘How do you know how much time it takes me to present the slides?’ What if you configure the automatic timing value for two minutes, but it takes you three minutes to cover all the points on a slide?

What you can do is to ensure you give yourself the right amount of time to get through a slide, is to rehearse your timings first.

1. From the Slide Show menu, click the Rehearse Timings options. This starts your presentation in rehearsal mode with a timer in the top left hand corner.
2. When you are finished discussing the points on one slide, click the Advance button to move to the next slide.
3. Once you reach the end of the presentation, click Yes to accept the timings.