When you give a presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint, the standard way to move from one slide to the next is to click your mouse or press the spacebar. However, if you are giving an interactive presentation, running a self-service kiosk, or using a slide with complex clickable menus and hyperlinks, this default behavior is disastrous. A stray click anywhere on the background of the screen will instantly pull the user away from their current slide and dump them onto the next one.
If you want users to navigate your presentation exclusively using the specific buttons or hyperlinks you designed (or if you only want the presentation to advance on a strict automated timer), you must turn off the “Advance on Mouse Click” setting.
How to Turn Off “Advance Slide on Mouse Click”
You can disable this behavior for a single slide, or apply the change to your entire presentation.
- Open your presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint.
- Click on the Transitions tab in the ribbon at the top of the screen.
- Look all the way to the far right side of the ribbon for the section labeled Timing.
- Under the “Advance Slide” heading, you will see a checkbox labeled On Mouse Click.
- Uncheck this box.
How to Apply the Rule to the Whole Presentation
If you only unchecked the box, the setting was only applied to the specific slide you currently have selected. If you want to disable mouse-click advancement for the entire file:
- Ensure the “On Mouse Click” box is unchecked.
- Immediately to the left of that checkbox (still in the Transitions tab), click the button labeled Apply To All.
Now, if you launch your slideshow (F5), clicking the mouse on the background of a slide will do absolutely nothing. You must use the arrow keys on your keyboard, a dedicated clicker remote, or on-screen hyperlinks to navigate the presentation.