October 7th, 2011
We recently discovered this informative article on preventing “screen freeze” in dual monitor mode. You can read the original article in its entirety here. http://accelerating.org/articles/beyondpresenterview.html
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Avoiding a Common Presentation Problem: Screen Freeze in Dual Monitor Mode
by John Smart
/>PowerPoint will keep both your laptop and screen slides will remain synchronized only if you remain in PowerPoint Slide Show mode during your presentation. If you accidentally move your cursor back to your laptop / primary monitor display at any point during your presentation and click anywhere, or alternatively, if you click on the “Microsoft PowerPoint” tab in the taskbar, your slides and notes will continue to advance in Normal view on your main screen/laptop screen, BUT your Monitor 2 slides (audience slides) will stay frozen at the point where you clicked away. Also, if you don’t click on a picture element in your presentation BEFORE you select presentation mode, the two screens may not synchronize. Finally, if you hit F7 too early, the projector and laptop display may not synchronize. Depending on your content, speaking style, and audience awareness, it could be quite a while before you discover the problem.
Ouch!
Once you catch your mistake, you’ll need to surf your cursor back to Monitor 2 and click on it anywhere OR click on the “PowerPoint Slide Show” tab in your taskbar. At this point your laptop slides will resynch with Monitor 2′s (audience) slides, which will now display the next slide after the one previously displayed on Monitor 2. This is probably a safety feature, as it keeps the audience from skipping any slides. But it can be embarassing to talk for several minutes, with your slides advancing on your laptop but frozen on the audience monitor, then discover you’ve lost synch and have to backtrack. It might even blow your presentation if your timing is tight.
You can prevent this from happening by always being very conscious of what you do with your mouse, but if you want one easy way to stay out of trouble, once you have your presentation set up, just don’t touch your mouse or touchpad at all during your talk.
Advance or reverse your slides using only the arrow keys on your laptop, or better yet, advance with a wireless clicker and laser pointer. The wireless clicker will free you from having to touch your computer at all, let you point at things on the screen with your laser, and free you to walk around the room and among your audience whenever you have slides that don’t have notes you need to look at.
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