Beginners Guide to Creating a Custom Show in PowerPoint

If you spend a lot of time preparing presentations for your various clients, you can adapt one presentation to fit a variety of audiences by making use of custom shows. A custom show is a customized slide show created using specific slides reused or pulled out from the original presentation. In this article, we’ll show you how to customize your PowerPoint presentation so that you can quickly create a custom show for your various needs.

Types of Custom Shows in PowerPoint

In PowerPoint, you can create two types of custom shows; one which is a normal presentation and the other, involving hyperlinks. In a normal presentation, you create a separate presentation that includes a few slides from the original presentation. In a hyperlinked custom show, you add hyperlinks to navigate to specific slides in the original presentation.

Basic Custom Show: You can use a basic presentation when you want to present to different audiences. For example, if your original presentation contains 8 slides, you can use specific slides to create different custom shows to cater to each set of audiences. For example, you can have a custom show called Company A containing slides 1,2,3,5,7,8, another one called Company B involving slides 2,4,6,7,8 and a third one called Company C containing slides 1,3,5,6,8. The custom slide show in each of these cases involve slides from the original presentation, but can be arranged in a sequence, making the flow of slides straightforward and easy.

Hyperlinked Custom Show: Hyperlinked custom shows are ideal when you present to groups of people within your company. In such cases, you create a custom slide show with links going back to the original presentation. Another instance will be when you want to navigate a long presentation using a Table of Contents.

Now, let’s take a look at how you can create a custom slide show in PowerPoint.

How To Create a Custom Show in PowerPoint 2010 (Basic Show)

Before you start creating your custom slide show, create all the necessary slides.

1. On the Slide Show tab, in the Start Slide Show group, click Custom Slide Show, and then click Custom Shows.

2. In the Custom Shows dialog box, click New.

3. In the Define Custom Show dialog box, in the Slides in presentation list box, select the slides that you want to include in the custom show, and then click Add. To select multiple slides in sequence, Shift-click the desired slides. To select multiple slides in a non sequential order, Ctrl-click the desired slides.

4. If necessary, in the Slides in custom show list box, select a slide, and then click the Up or Down arrows to move the slide up or down the list.

5. In the Slide show name text box, enter a name for the custom show and click OK.

6. Close the Custom Show dialog box.

You can also create additional custom shows with any of the slides in your presentation.

How To Create a Custom Show in PowerPoint 2010 (Hyperlinked Show)

1. Create a custom show if you don’t already have one.

2. On the desired slide, select the text or object that you want to hyperlink.

3. On the Insert tab, in the Links group, click Hyperlink.

4. In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, in the Link to section, click Place in This Document.

5. Link to the custom show.

• Link to a custom show: In the Select a place in this document list, select the custom show that you want to go to, and then select the Show and return check box. This will return you to the original spot in the presentation before you moved to the custom show. If you don’t select the Show and return option, the presentation will end with the custom show itself.
• Link to a location in the current presentation: In the Select a place in this document list, select the slide that you want to navigate to.

6. Click OK to close the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

When you hyperlink text, the color of the text will appear in a different color (depending on the theme of your presentation) with the same color underline. When you hyperlink an object, the mouse pointer will turn to a hand cursor in the Slide Show view.

Sometimes, all you need to do is hide a few slides in your presentation without rearranging the entire slide show. You can do this by selecting the desired slides and then on the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click Hide Slide.

There may be times when you want to makes changes to the custom show that you created. You can do this using the Custom Show dialog box, which you used to create a custom slide show. Let's now check out how to edit or manage a custom show.

How to Edit or Manage a Custom Show

1. On the Slide Show tab, in the Start Slide Show group, click Custom Slide Show and from the drop-down list select Custom Show.

2. In the Custom Shows dialog box, select the custom show you want to edit and click Edit.

3. In the Define Custom Show dialog box, in the Slides in custom show list box, select the slide you want to edit.

• Click the Remove button to remove a slide.

• Rearrange the order of the slides using the Up or Down arrow buttons.

• Modify the name of the custom show by deleting the existing name and entering a new one.

4. You can also add more slides to the custom show by selecting a slide in the Slides in presentation list box and clicking Add.

5. Click OK to close the Define Custom Show dialog box and then close the Custom Shows dialog box.

How to Copy a Custom Show in PowerPoint 2010

A quick and easy way to create a custom show is to reuse a previous custom show that you created. For instance, if the custom show that you want to create has content relevant to a previously created custom show, you can copy the previously created show and reuse the slides for the new show with modifications.

1. On the Slide Show tab, in the Start Slide Show group, click Custom Slide Show and from the drop-down list, select Custom Shows.

2. In the Custom Shows dialog box, select the custom show that you want to copy and click Copy.

3. A copy of the show appears in the Custom shows list box with the name Copy prefixed to the title.

4. Edit the custom show according to your requirements.

That's it! Now the next time you need to create a slideshow, make use of the customization options that PowerPoint allows via custom shows to quickly finalize your presentations.