More ideas and a wish list for ending a PowerPoint presentation with a different slide.
After our article on the ending slide options for PowerPoint, Vivian from the UK writes:
“… it’s really very easy to do what I always do at the end of PPT presentations. Just add a new blank slide – which will automatically have the same background as its predecessors (from the Master slide settings). As you say, it looks much more professional than ‘crashing’ out of the presentation at the end.
By the way, I also include a number of such blank slides throughout my presentations to tell the audience when a new chapter (so to speak) is starting. “
Vivian’s suggestion is worth considering since Microsoft hasn’t given us anything better.
We’d be inclined to put multiple blank slides at the presentation end just in case we get enthusiastic and move too quickly through the end slides.
The fact remains that you can ‘run past’ the blank slide to either black or the computer screen. After all these years of PowerPoint development, we think it’s not too much to ask for a more elegant set of options from Microsoft.
Some possibilities that Microsoft should have put into PowerPoint long ago:
- Stopping on the last slide. If the presenter tries to go past the end of the presentation a simple icon appears in the corner of the screen to indicate that it’s the last slide (much like the navigation icons on DVD players).
- Color choice. At the very least Microsoft could let us choose the color of the ending screen. “Any color as long as its black” might have worked for Henry Ford but we’re in a different century now.
See Also
- What they think of me / What I really do – in PowerPoint
- Anti-PowerPoint Party in Swiss elections
- Avoid the black slide at the end of a slideshow
