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Working with Custom Slide Shows
Most slide shows have a linear flow: first slide one, then slide two, and so on. This format is suitable for situations where you are presenting clear-cut information with few variables, but if the situation becomes more complex, a single-path slide show may not suffice.For example, suppose your show's purpose is to convince a group of managers to buy your product. You will sell your product based on three of its qualities. If you encounter any skepticism to your claims about any of these three topics, you want to be prepared to show a set of backup slides presenting the technical facts behind your assertions. Therefore, you will need to prepare three custom shows and keep those custom shows as backups in reserve for those situations. Figure 15-7 shows an example.
Figure 15-7: You can use custom shows to hide related groups of backup slides.
You might also use a custom show to set aside a group of slides for a specific audience. For example, you might need to present essentially the same information to employees at two different sites. You could create custom shows within the main show that include the slides that both shows have in common plus slides that are appropriate for only one audience or the other. This is better than creating two separate presentation files because if the common slides need to change, you can make the changes only once, and they will appear in both custom shows. Figure 15-8 shows an example.
Figure 15-8: Custom shows can allow the same basic presentation to be used for multiple audiences with some of the same slides and some different ones.
Notice in Figure 15-8 that some of the slides in the two custom shows are the same, yet they're repeated in each custom show rather than jumping back to the main presentation. That's because it's much easier to jump to a custom show once and stay there than it is to keep jumping into and out of the show.Slides in a custom show remain a part of the main presentation. Placing a slide in a custom show does not exclude it from the regular flow. However, you may decide that you don't want to show the main presentation in its entirety anymore; you may just want to use it as a resource pool from which to select the slides for the various custom shows you create in it. You can then create a slide at the beginning of the presentation with buttons that you can click to jump to one custom show or another.
| XREF | Chapter 17 explains how to create action buttons. |
Here are some ideas to get you started thinking about how and why you might want to include custom shows in your presentation files:
Managing change. By creating a single presentation file with custom shows, you make it easy to manage changes. If any changes occur in your company that affect any of the common slides, making the change once in your presentation file makes the change to each of the custom shows automatically.
Avoiding duplication. If you have several shows that use about 50 percent of the same slides and 50 percent different ones, you can create all of the shows as custom shows within a single presentation. That way the presentations can share those 50 percent of the slides that they have in common. (Beware file size, though, if that's an issue for you.)
Overcoming objections. As I mentioned earlier, you can anticipate client objections to your sales pitch and prepare several custom shows, each of which addresses a particular objection. Then whatever reason your potential customer gives for not buying your product, you have countermeasures.
Covering your backside. If you think that you may be asked for specific figures or other information during a presentation to your bosses, you can have that information ready in a custom show (or on a few simple hidden slides, if there is not much of it) to whip out, if needed.
Creating and Editing a Custom Show
The custom show itself contains no slides per se-it is just a playlist of slides that gets pulled from the main presentation at large when you run the custom show. Therefore, you must create all the slides for the custom show(s) ahead of time, and then define the show. To create a custom show, follow these steps:
Choose Slide Show⇨Custom Shows. The Custom Shows dialog box opens.
Click the New button. The Define Custom Show dialog box appears.
Enter a name for your custom show in the Slide Show Name text box.
In the Slides in presentation pane, click the first slide that you want to appear in the custom show.
| Tip | You can select multiple slides in step 4 by holding down the Ctrl key as you click the ones you want. However, be aware that if you do this, the slides move to the Slides in Custom Show pane in the order that they originally appeared in that selection group. If you want them in a different order, copy each slide over separately in the order that you want them, or rearrange the order when you get to step 7. |
Click the Add button to copy the slide(s) to the Slides in Custom Show pane (see Figure 15-9).
Repeat steps 4 and 5 as needed to add more slides.
If you need to rearrange the slides, click the slide and then click the Up or Down arrow buttons.
Click OK. The new show appears in the Custom Shows dialog box.
(Optional) To test your custom show, click the Show button. Otherwise, click Close to close the dialog box.
Figure 15-9: Use the Add button to copy slides from the main presentation into the custom show.
To edit a custom show, choose Slide Show⇨Custom Shows again to open the Custom Shows dialog box (see Figure 15-10). Select the custom show, click Edit to reopen the Define Custom Show dialog box (refer to Figure 15-9), and make your changes. Removing a slide from a custom show does not remove it from the presentation at large.
Figure 15-10: Manage your custom shows here.
You may find that you want to create several very similar custom shows; if so, use the Copy button in the Custom Shows dialog box (see Figure 15-10) to create a copy of a show and then edit it (using the Edit button). You can also delete custom shows from the Custom Shows dialog box (using the Remove button).
Displaying a Custom Show During a Presentation
From the Slides menu in Slide Show view, choose Custom Show to open a submenu listing the available custom shows, and then pick the custom show you want.When you start a custom show, you are no longer in the main presentation. To test this for yourself, open the Slides menu again, point to Go to Slide, and check out the list of slides. The list will include only the slides from the custom show.To get back to the main show, press Ctrl+S to open the All Slides dialog box, and then from the Show drop-down list choose All Slides. This will give you a full list of all slides in the presentation. Then, simply select a slide you want to go to and click the Go To button (see Figure 15-11).
Figure 15-11: Return to the full presentation from the All Slides dialog box.
