Slides don't show in Slide Show View
Problem
You know you created a slide -- you can see it in the thumbnails in the navigation and slide panes -- but in slide show view, it disappears.
Possible causes and solutions
There are several reasons why this might happen. Courtesy of PowerPoint MVP Sandy Johnson, here they are:
The slide is hidden.
In the animation pane or slide sorter view each slide thumbnail is numbered. If the number is covered with a gray box, then it is
hidden. To fix (in all versions of PowerPoint)
- Right click on the thumbnail (or select all affected thumbnails, then right click)
- Click Hide Slide on the pop-up menu to remove the checkmark next to it.
Set up Show Settings are causing the problem.
Go to Slide Show | Set up Slide Show.
In the Show Slides section, choose All. The other options will cause PowerPoint to display just a range of slides or a custom show.
Slide(s) set at zero second auto transition
If the slide is set to advance automatically after a very short time, PowerPoint won't have enough time to display it at all.
- In PowerPoint 2003 and previous choose Slide Show|Slide Transition
- In PowerPoint 2007 choose Animations | Transition To This Slide
- Set Transition to occur on click or set auto transition to allow enough time for slide to be viewed before it advances to the next slide automatically.
Invisible Monitor Problem.
The slide show might be set up to display on a second monitor. If you don't have a second monitor attached to your computer, the slide show will be very difficult to see.
Go to Slide Show | Set Up Show and choose Show on | Primary Monitor.
For more details on the Invisible Monitor Problem, see:
- Can't run slideshow / screen show won't start; Icon appears on task bar
- PowerPoint MVP, John Wilson's site