PowerPoint Tip: Refer to Notes Only You Can See When Presenting

As I've mentioned before, it's a bad idea to load up our PowerPoint slides with tons of text. The more terse, the better. Yet people still write dense blocks of text in their slides. Why? Often, so they can more or less read the slides verbatim when they deliver the presentation. There's a better way.

It's easy to display your slide notes on your laptop while projecting the slides themselves on the big screen. That way, you can show off your elegant, well-crafted slides while referring back to notes on the smaller screen. Write anything in the notes, and be as verbose as you like -- no one will see it but you.

This feature has been around pretty much forever, but it's amazing how few people are aware of it. To project your slide notes on the laptop while showing different slides on the second display, just click the Slide Show tab and check the option that says Use Presenter View. That's all you need to do! [via Digital Inspirations]

Want more presentation tips? Don't forget to check out our roundup of top advice for creating killer PowerPoint presentations.