Mac Powerpoint 2011 forces presenter mode

[Rob Duncan]

Alright, I have been educated in the way of Microsoft.

Turns out, they have a ‘Slide Show’ menu in the menu bar, and ANOTHER ‘Slide Show’ menu in the ribbon interface they love to talk about (it’s the sub-menu underneath the usual Mac menu bar).

Turns out that in each of these 2 ‘Slide Show’ menus are different options.

1) open the ribbon ‘Slide Show’
2) on the right is an option to present cloned (or mirrored), or with the presenter display.

NOTE: this option does not appear in the Preferences, ‘Set up show’ dialog or the real ‘Slide show’ menu, like you’d expect.

In case you’re curious,

"The Ribbon is part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface [and] is designed to help you quickly find the commands that you need to complete a task. Commands are organized in logical groups."

Like putting the ‘Master Slides’ under ‘View’ instead of ‘Design’

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Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Phil Senger]

Count on Microsoft to “Make it easier” Ya right!
Thanks for the tip Rob, luckily most of my Mac clients use Keynote, haven’t had the pleasure of Office 2011… yet

Phil Senger

SW Audio+Visual
Vancouver, BC
http://www.sw-online.com

[Rob Duncan]

Well, one side-effect of forcing Presenter View even when the computer is Mirrored (or Cloned in PC-speak) will be that more and more presenters will insist on having their presenter notes visible on confidence monitors, etc.

Goodbye laptop playback.

We’ve had good success loading a Mac Mini with dual-boot capabilities and using it’s dual outputs to send both presenter view and presentation view out simultaneously using Powerpoint Windows, Powerpoint Mac and Keynote.

R.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Andy Stinton]

Rob discovered this on a show just minutes before a presenter shows up who actually had not ever used Office 2011…Oh the joys of talent:(

Andy Stinton
Corporate Video
Live & Stage Events
Business Practices

[Donald Smith]

Hello Rob, Donald Smith from Scotland here. I am trialing the Mac version of office and have come across the same problem with PowerPoint.

I have found the two menus as you say, but no method to switch on mirroring on either. The Microsoft help system explains something that is physically ‘not there’ in the menu structure.

How did you manage to resolve the issue in the end. I just want to show 2 full screen presentations on two screens.

Regards

Donald Smith

[Rob Duncan]

I’m not sure. On my screen, selecting ‘Slide Show’ on the ribbon menu gives me a set of icons on the right, like this:

I haven’t checked this without a secondary monitor attached yet, as I’m currently in show. Perhaps the option doesn’t show unless the 2nd screen is attached?

The default is presenter view, and selecting ‘Mirror Show’ will switch the computer into the mode you want when you play the slide show. [Cmd-Enter] to play from current slide or [Cmd-Shift-Enter] to play from the start.

Rob.

————–
Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Jim Manger]

I am at an event where the presenter has his new MacBook Air running PowerPoint 2011. The mirror icon does not appear anywhere except in the help. The screen is so small he needed to mirror but was not able to. The second screen was attached (had to restart since detect displays didn’t work). I feel like Microsoft is laughing at me. Another substandard software release to drive everyone crazy.

[Mathew Slack]

All,

Found the solution to this while working an event last night. On the MAC version of Office 2k11 Make sure you resolution is something widescreen or stretched (1440×900), only when this resolution is up select slide show in the ribbon (the line of “short cuts” between the design area and the file menus at the top). ONLY when you have a wide screen resolution selected was I able to reveal the Mirror displays / Presenter view icons (under slide show ribbon, right hand side). Click Mirror displays and it will stay persistent after reboots, different files, etc.

Thanks,

Mathew Slack
PSAV Presentation Services
Whistler, Canada

[Rob Duncan]

Yeah, Matt you’re right. If you are running Powerpoint:Mac in a less than fullscreen environment, there are likely hidden ribbon options off to the right.

Of course, there are no visual indications that you’re missing anything, so you could be banging your head against the keyboard for a while. Don’t worry: this behaviour is consistent across Excel and Word, so if you’re wondering why you can drop down the box border selector in Excel, it’s because MS has efficiently streamlined your workflow.

Even more tricky? The icons and items pop on and off quite dynamically in Excel and Word, so you don’t just lose the right-most icons, but whichever icons the UI staff at MS felt were least important to them.

My only advice? Click the ‘maximize’ button whenever you feel frustrated. Just don’t ask me to explain why the box border selector is in the ‘Font’ sub-ribbon of the Home ribbon.

Rob.

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Freaky People Productions,
Live Event Technical Production
Toronto, CANADA

[Bruce Mcfadden]

When I hook my MBP to my TV via an HDMI cable and run a PowerPoint in Presenter mode things are seemingly backwards. The presenter screen appears on the TV and the PwrPnt presentation itself appears on the computer. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

I’ve fiddled with both slide show menus and tried every I can think of to reverse the screens. The swap display button is on the TV and the cursor in on the computer screen. How can I get to see the presenter screen on my computer and have the presentation on the TV?

Is there a shortcut key combo for swap display? Thanks

BCMCF