View and Edit a PowerPoint Presentation Simultaneously

Before you get in front of your audience, you will want to run through the slide presentation at least once, to check timing, animation and the flow of information. If you discover that an element needs to be changed, you would typically exit slide show mode and go into edit mode to fix the slide.

There is an undocumented trick that allows you to have both a slide show and editable version on the screen simultaneously and to easily move between them.

How to do it?

Open an existing PowerPoint presentation or create a new one.

Hold the Ctrl key and click the Slide show From Current Slide button in the lower-left corner of your screen. A miniature window opens with the slide show while keeping the larger, editable version displayed.

Click on the slides in the miniature window to move throughout the presentation (or click on the forward and back arrows that appear in the lower-left corner of the small window).

Click on the large version of the presentation if you find a slide that needs to be edited.

To resume the slideshow in the small window, click Resume Slide Show on the displayed Slide Show toolbar.