10.3 Delivering the talk
Checked against Microsoft's PowerPoint for Windows keyboard references, August 2026
What you'll be able to do
Present to the room instead of reading the screen. Presenter View does the remembering, and your timings are rehearsed against reality. Questions are handled without losing the thread, and you have a plan for the day the projector dies.
Before you start
Your rebuilt practice deck, a timer, and ideally a second screen. A television or a second monitor stands in for a projector.
The work
- Same either way: learn the controls. Press AltF5 for Presenter View. The audience gets the content on one screen. You get the current slide, the next slide, so that a transition never surprises you, your notes, and a timer. This is why the six-line habit works: the detail lives in the notes, where only you can see it. Move with the arrow keys, or with N and P. Press B to black the screen when you want the room's eyes on you. Esc ends the show.
- Same either way: put the speech in the notes pane, not on the slides. Write reminders, not sentences, because reading a script aloud is the thing this whole lesson exists to prevent. The slide carries the room's one idea, and the notes carry your thread.
- No documented keyboard shortcut for this — use the menu: rehearse against a clock, not a feeling. Slide Show → Rehearse Timings runs the deck and records how long you actually spend on each slide. The summary at the end sets your estimate against reality. The usual result is that everyone runs long. The fix is cutting slides, not talking faster. A ten-minute slot wants about ten content slides, and the design lesson's habit of cutting applies to the whole deck.
- Same either way: handle questions without losing the room. Park the deep ones honestly: "good question, let me take that afterwards, so we finish on time." And prepare backup slides. After your closing slide, keep two or three hidden slides holding the detail you expect to be asked about. The data table behind the chart, say, or how the work was done. If it is asked, you jump straight there by typing the slide's number and pressing Enter during the show, and you look extremely well prepared. If it is not asked, nobody knows they exist.
- Same either way: plan for the projector failing, because one day it will. Export the deck to PDF onto a phone or a drive, because a PDF opens without PowerPoint. Have the one-page handout version. And here is the real preparation: know your argument well enough to give the talk to the room with no slides at all. A presenter who survives a dead projector owns the room afterwards. The deck supports the talk and is not the talk.
- Same either way: do one full rehearsal, standing, out loud, with Presenter View on the second screen and the timer running. Speaking a talk is a different act from reading it silently, and the first time should not be in front of the audience.
Try it
Write notes for five slides of your deck, and add two hidden backup slides after the close. Run Rehearse Timings and cut to fit. Then deliver the five minutes standing, in Presenter View, ending with a jump to a backup slide by number.
Check yourself
What does Presenter View give you that the audience never sees?
The next slide, your notes and the timer, so the remembering happens on screen instead of in your head. The room sees only the current slide. AltF5 starts it, and B blacks the screen.
Rehearse Timings says twenty minutes for a ten-minute slot. What is the fix?
Cut slides, to roughly one content slide per minute. Never talk faster. Density is the problem, and the notes pane and the handout absorb what the cut removes.
Describe the backup-slide trick and the keystroke that makes it smooth.
Hidden slides after the close, holding the answers you expect to be asked for. During the show, type the slide number and press Enter to jump straight to one.
What is the real preparation for equipment failure?
Knowing your argument well enough to give the talk with no slides at all. A PDF copy and a one-page handout are the material fallbacks. The deck supports the talk, and it is not the talk.
Go deeper
We haven't checked most of these for screen reader use yet.