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MS Office Powerpoint 2008 - Turn off "View Presenter Tools"

MooneyFlyer

MooneyFlyer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
1,484
0
Boston
All,

I've googled and not come up with anything truly useful. I'm hoping by squeaking a little someone can give me a tip.

Quite often I do Powerpoint presentations using a dual monitor / projector set up. The "Presenter Tools" in Powerpoint 2008 are quite useful to remind me where I am in the presentation, keep timing, etc. However, I can't seem to figure out how to turn them off. The obvious, "Uncheck View Presenter Tools", doesn't seem to do anything.

What makes this worse is that there is no way that I can find to open another application over the Presenter Tools without disrupting the actual presentation. I would like to have a notes program open (text file, MacJournal, etc.) to take detailed notes. That eliminates a notebook from my bag.

One potential workaround is to use Mirror Mode for the screens -- but that doesn't allow the notes program either?

I suspect this is supposed to work and just doesn't. Does anyone know a workaround or have any reasonable suggestions? (FWIW I have to use Powerpoint due to work).
 
I

iamcap

macrumors newbie
Apr 6, 2009
2
0
Did you solve this problem?

You had a exactly same problem with me...

Did you solve this problem or just give up?

If you know a solution of this problem, please let me know..

Thanks
 
I

iamcap

macrumors newbie
Apr 6, 2009
2
0
Did you solve this problem?

You had a exactly same problem with me...

Did you solve this problem or just give up?

If you know a solution of this problem, please let me know..

Thanks
 
MooneyFlyer

MooneyFlyer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
1,484
0
Boston
iamcap said:
You had a exactly same problem with me...

Did you solve this problem or just give up?

If you know a solution of this problem, please let me know..

Thanks
Click to expand...

I have not solved this problem yet and can't believe that more people haven't mentioned that they have it as well. I just spent a few weeks in Japan and Korea giving presentations and it is completely annoying that I cannot take notes without screwing up the presentation.

At some point I plan to sign up for the MS forum to ask about this so that it has a remote chance of getting fixed.
 
katanna

katanna

macrumors 6502
May 6, 2004
340
41
We used to use PowerPoint as our church presentation software, and we used it without presenter tools. This allowed us to do many things, like make changes on the fly, and surf the web. Now PowerPoint is useless because you can't turn off presenter tools. Thankfully we have gone to using ProPresenter, a Mac-only presentation solution for churches.

Matthew
 
MooneyFlyer

MooneyFlyer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
1,484
0
Boston
katanna said:
We used to use PowerPoint as our church presentation software, and we used it without presenter tools. This allowed us to do many things, like make changes on the fly, and surf the web. Now PowerPoint is useless because you can't turn off presenter tools. Thankfully we have gone to using ProPresenter, a Mac-only presentation solution for churches.

Matthew
Click to expand...

It is shocking that Microsoft doesn't see this as a problem...
 
Detektiv-Pinky

Detektiv-Pinky

macrumors 6502a
Feb 25, 2006
848
192
Berlin, Germany
MooneyFlyer said:
All,

I've googled and not come up with anything truly useful. I'm hoping by squeaking a little someone can give me a tip.

Quite often I do Powerpoint presentations using a dual monitor / projector set up. The "Presenter Tools" in Powerpoint 2008 are quite useful to remind me where I am in the presentation, keep timing, etc. However, I can't seem to figure out how to turn them off. The obvious, "Uncheck View Presenter Tools", doesn't seem to do anything.

What makes this worse is that there is no way that I can find to open another application over the Presenter Tools without disrupting the actual presentation. I would like to have a notes program open (text file, MacJournal, etc.) to take detailed notes. That eliminates a notebook from my bag.

One potential workaround is to use Mirror Mode for the screens -- but that doesn't allow the notes program either?

I suspect this is supposed to work and just doesn't. Does anyone know a workaround or have any reasonable suggestions? (FWIW I have to use Powerpoint due to work).
Click to expand...

Have you tried presenting without the presenters tool?
If you click the small screen icon in the bottom left corner, Powerpoint goes into full screen mode immediately without starting the presenters tools. (The keyboard shortcut for this is cmd-return)
In Windows you can move powerpoint to the external display and have some other application open on your monitor. Have not tried it with a Mac yet...

Edit: I think I tried it once and it worked. However, I currently have no external display, so I can't make sure what the exact steps are...
 
MooneyFlyer

MooneyFlyer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
1,484
0
Boston
Detektiv-Pinky said:
Have you tried presenting without the presenters tool?
If you click the small screen icon in the bottom left corner, Powerpoint goes into full screen mode immediately without starting the presenters tools. (The keyboard shortcut for this is cmd-return)
In Windows you can move powerpoint to the external display and have some other application open on your monitor. Have not tried it with a Mac yet...

Edit: I think I tried it once and it worked. However, I currently have no external display, so I can't make sure what the exact steps are...
Click to expand...

I think that is the point. I've yet to find a single person that can make a presentation using Mac Office 2008 without having the presenter tools overtake the secondary display... I just tried it with the update that came out in the last day or so and it still misbehaves...
 
Detektiv-Pinky

Detektiv-Pinky

macrumors 6502a
Feb 25, 2006
848
192
Berlin, Germany
MooneyFlyer said:
I think that is the point. I've yet to find a single person that can make a presentation using Mac Office 2008 without having the presenter tools overtake the secondary display... I just tried it with the update that came out in the last day or so and it still misbehaves...
Click to expand...

Ok, you picked my curiosity I tried it and I could not get it to work. This is strange behaviour though, why would they have this different menu entries if they produce the same results.

Head over to the Office Thread and PM Nadyne. She certainly seems to be responsive to technical questions about MS Office.
 
L

LazyAngel

macrumors newbie
Mar 6, 2008
2
0
Wow, this is terrible. I just made my presentation thinking that I'll deal with that later, as it has got to just be a toggle somewhere.

At least now I can stop searching for a solution. No more Powerpoint for me!
 
M

mr.e-man

macrumors newbie
Oct 21, 2009
2
0
OK, so I understand everyone's frustrations with PowerPoint 2008 and the inability to turn off the Presenter Tools on a secondary monitor. I'm experiencing the same thing.

However, does Keynote do the same thing? Are you able to run a Keynote presentation on a second display while still having full edit access to the source Keynote presentation, as well as access to Internet, other programs, etc.?
 
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