A common situation before the start of a lecture:

• There are still a few minutes until the presentation begins.
• Not all participants are in the room yet, or not all are seated in their seats.
• The presenter is still speaking with other people.
• Technical or organizational problems are delaying the start.
• etc.

Normally, the screen is dark at this point, or the title of the presentation is already displayed. You can use this time more effectively by playing an introductory sequence/loop that repeats continuously until the actual start.

The advantage:

• Before the lecture begins, a certain calm settles over the plenary session.
• The audience is introduced to the topic or other background information.
• They have communicated important, general, or organizational information nonverbally (on several occasions).

Of course, you can also achieve this in the normal way by running a second presentation beforehand.

Disadvantage of two presentations:

• You have to go to the keyboard and start the main presentation – and mistakes often happen during handling.
• You have two presentations that you must consider and archive in all settings (including in advance).

However, with a simple trick, you can save both presentations in the same file. This article explains how to add a loop to your main presentation, allowing you to work with only one presentation at a time.

Normally, your screen looks like this:

A) On the left is the slide preview – displayed in a size appropriate to the width of the section.

B) The first slide is visible on the right.

First, proceed as follows:

1) Design or copy all the slides that represent the "loop" before your first slide of your actual presentation.

A) Three slides represent the LOOP.

B) The first slide is shown.

2) Make sure that NO animation effect in any of these slides starts with the "On Click" function.

3) In the "Transitions" tab, remove the checkmark next to " On mouse click" under > Next slide .

4) Select the desired transitions and suitable times for them.

5) Be sure to run these slides completely as a test to ensure that the loop runs flawlessly later.

Now comes the little trick:

6) Highlight ALL slides of your actual presentation.

7) Hover your mouse over one of the now-selected slides. Right-click and select "Hide Slide" from the context menu at the bottom.

B) You can now see that (in PPT 2010) the slide numbers on the left are surrounded by a square and crossed out diagonally. In PPT 2013/16, the number is simply crossed out. Hidden slides are also displayed transparently.

In A) you can see that the first three slides are not crossed out.

8) Under > Slide Show > Set up Slide Show , in the > Show options section, check the box for > Repeat until “ESC” is pressed .

9) The presentation now repeats “infinitely”, meaning that the loop is played over and over again, as the other slides of your main presentation are completely hidden.

To ensure you can start your presentation at any time without much effort, you need to include a hyperlink (invisible to the viewer).

• Design a > shape > rectangle .
• Set the fill of the rectangle to 100% transparency (blue outline).
• Enlarge the rectangle so that all edges extend beyond the foil into the grey area.

• Highlight the rectangle and select > Hyperlink . The following menu will open. Click on > Current Document and select the first slide of your main presentation. The number is shown in parentheses because the slides are hidden.

• Then copy the rectangle containing the link and paste it onto all slides in the loop. The link's target address remains the same: Slide 4.
• Leave the rectangle's outline intact, as it lies outside the slide and will be immediately visible when editing the slides later. It also won't appear in a printed version.

If the loop plays repeatedly before your presentation, you can click anywhere with your mouse at any time. The link will then be activated, and you will immediately be taken to the first slide of your actual presentation.

These topics are suitable for such an introduction:

• Information about your own company
• Product descriptions, photos, etc.
• Content notes for the subsequent presentation
• General descriptions (break times, organizational matters, etc.)

TIP: Remember to press the "ESC" key after your presentation. If you click normally on your last slide, the presentation will loop again from the beginning ("Repeat until ESC is pressed" is still enabled!).

NOTE: When copying hidden slides, they will still remain hidden after pasting!

We hope you enjoy trying it out!