Use looping introductory slide(s) in a presentation - PPT 2019-2024

It is a common practice to show introductory or welcome slides as your audience arrives for a presentation. Capture their attention from the moment they arrive with a series of slides introducing the purpose of your presentation. Think of it as a kind of mini-presentation.

It doesn't matter where you place the introductory slides in the main presentation, at the beginning or the end. Use as many introductory slides as you need, but keep them to a minimum.

Create the main presentation and add introductory slides. The introductory slides should repeat without advancing to the main presentation.

Essentially, you're creating two presentations in one. The goal is for the introductory slides to repeat until the main presentation starts. This means you should be able to switch smoothly from the introductory slides to the main presentation.

Select the introductory slides in your presentation. You can do this in either normal view or slide sorter view.

Since these slides need to be displayed continuously, we'll set a transition time using the Transitions tab. If the transition time is the same for all slides, select them all, deselect "On Mouse Click" in the Timing group, and set the desired duration in the After group. To set different durations, select the slides one by one and set the desired number of seconds.

All introductory slides must be selected before going to the Slide Show tab and selecting the Set up Slide Show button in the Set up group.

In the dialog box, check the Loop continuously until Esc checkbox.

In the Show Slides section, set the number of slides you want to repeat in the From and To boxes. Click OK.

For the main presentation, we'll create a custom slideshow.

Click the Slide Show tab, click Custom Slide Show in the Start Slide Show group, and then choose Custom Shows.

Click the New button in the dialog box.

In the Define Custom Show dialog box, enter the name of the main presentation next to the Slideshow Name item.

In the left-hand column, Slides in Presentation, select all the slides that belong in the main presentation. Unfortunately, you can't select them all at once.

Now click the Add button to add them to the Slides in Custom Show column.

Click OK and then click Close.

How do you start the main presentation?

To do this, add an action button to the last introductory slide that will start the main presentation.

Select the last slide of the introductory slides.

Click the Insert tab, click the Shapes button in the Illustrations group, and then choose a shape from the action buttons at the bottom under the Action Buttons section. For example, the second from the left Next.

Drag it onto the slide where you want to place the button.

In the Action Settings dialog box, select Custom Show"under the Hyperlink To radio button and select the show you just created.

Click OK twice to return to normal view.

Start the presentation and let the introductory slides run. At the appropriate time, click the action button at the bottom of the last introductory slide to start your main presentation. After presenting all the slides from the main presentation, PPT automatically returns to the first slide of the main presentation.

Is the action button too eye-catching?

Make it invisible. With the action button still selected, click the Shape Format tab. In the Shape Styles group, click the down arrow and, under Presets, select the first Transparent - Black, Dark1 button. Es long as you do not type text in the button it will be invisible.