Quick Presentation Tip: Alt-Tab is your Friend!

After seeing a few presentations recently I thought I’d throw this out there.   You don’t have to stop your PowerPoint presentation so that you can switch to a demo or another application.  Just Alt-Tab (or Windows-Tab if you’re on Vista) over to the other application.  If you need to spin up the other application then just hit the Windows key to bring up the start menu and go from there.  This saves people watching you flip back to PowerPoint later and try to get find the right button to get the slide show started again (doing that is much nicer with Office 2007, but still, it’s not necessary). 

Two other related tips:

1. Don’t run the PowerPoint the usual way by double-clicking on the deck.  This causes two windows to be on the taskbar and may become confusing if you are alt-tabbing between demos and your presentation.  Instead find the deck (or short-cut to the deck –see below) and right-click -> Show.  This brings up the deck only in slide show mode.
2.  Set up shortcuts to your presentation, demos and other applications you want to use during your presentation.  I like to put these as links off my taskbar as a toolbar.  If you right click the taskbar you’ll see a Toolbars entry on the context menu.  This is where you can turn toolbars on and off.  Built in toolbars are things like Media Player, Desktop Search, etc.  You can also point to any folder on your machine and it will be come a link off the taskbar.  I set up a folder with a link to my presentation, demos and any other application I want to run during my presentation, and then make that a toolbar.  Then during my presentation I’m not hunting or pecking around for what I need.  When I get to a demo slide I simply hit the Windows Key then use the mouse to go to the toolbar link and select the demo I want to show. 

Just thought I’d throw those out there.  Do you have any presentation tips you’d like to share?