any powerpoint experts? question....

[attgig]

I have a powerpoint presentation, but in the middle of it, I may want to go through my computer and open up some other items, and edit my powerpoint. Is there anyway to make the screen output a black screen while I'm doing that? It doesn't have to keep the place in the powerpoint presentation, as long as I can go back and go to the slide, and the make the secondary output show the slide again.


so, i guess is there any utility that would be able to just blank out the other screen so that I can fix my slide as the presentation is going on, and then go back to it?

[cheapie]

wow. i've never heard of anything like that. i know that if you hit B during the presentation, it will go blank. but once you alt-tab to another applications, everyone will see that.

[eSDee]

Are you going to be doing this using a projector? If so, you could make the projector your second monitor, and run the Powerpoint presentation on that. Then you would be free to goof around with your files on your main desktop without anyone checking em out.

[attgig]

Originally posted by eSDeeLoco
Are you going to be doing this using a projector? If so, you could make the projector your second monitor, and run the Powerpoint presentation on that. Then you would be free to goof around with your files on your main desktop without anyone checking em out.


but with Powerpoint....the only way it seems to work is that the second monitor just duplicates what happens on the first monitor. so, you see the same exact thing on the second monitor as the first.

[ray]

i don't believe there is anything you can do to edit on the fly. You could always just turn the projector OFF or change the video source that it's pulling from. That might work.

[NuTs62]

press the same button on your laptop that you press to activate it onto the projector. For me on my Dell, its like F8 or F5.

[attgig]

yeah..
the problem with the last two solutions is that:
1) if you turn the projector off, it takes like 20 seconds to turn it back on. and can't just cover the lens cuz it's mounted on the ceiling

2) u press the button to deactivate the second screen, the projector turns blue and everything's blue. that's not pretty

the only thing i can think of now is a kvm and second laptop...
or be better prepared...

[djradam]

what kind of file are you getting? i've seen some powerpoint presentations where if the person wants to use a sound file, they have a link in the presentation, so all they have to do is click on that link .. then they don't have to exit the program or anything.

If you're not using a sound file, MAYBE other files will work the same way.

If you're running a program, you could start it up before your presentation and do an alt+tab to switch to it (heck, you could do that with files too...)

I don't think there is a way to produce a black screen because if you have your computer hooked up through a projector, you're outputting everything you seen on the screen through the monitor output. you COULD open your display properties (right click on desktop -> properties). I'm assuming you're using a laptop, but you could go to the SETTINGS TAB (that's what i have) and just turn off the second monitor, then your computer won't be sending any data/images to that output, so, your projector will get no image and then they can't see it. once you open your file, just go back to settings and turn it back on (on my computer it would be labeled as a second monitor)

[DankNstickY]

hmm. i havent heard of anything like that either.

whats that prog called that can do that? "shout" or somethin...

a program that has 2 windows on the monitor, one that shows whats being displayed throught the projector, and one that allows you to edit and such. it has other little toolbars for editing and such. pretty good, but i dont even remember what its called.

[coleslaw]

Powerpoint is ghetto. Use Flash. :P