When you design a promotional slide deck to run on a massive television screen at a corporate trade show booth, or on a tablet in a museum exhibit, you cannot stand there all day manually pressing the spacebar to restart the file every time it ends. You need the presentation to behave like a standalone video: playing through all the slides automatically, reaching the end, and instantly looping back to the very first slide, continuously, forever.
Microsoft PowerPoint has a specific “Kiosk” mode designed explicitly for this exact scenario, preventing the presentation from stopping and completely locking out the keyboard and mouse to prevent attendees from messing with the computer.
Step 1: Automate the Slide Transitions
Before you tell the presentation to loop, you must ensure that every single slide is programmed to move forward automatically (without requiring a mouse click).
- Open your completed PowerPoint file.
- Look at the left-hand thumbnail pane. Click on Slide 1, then press Ctrl+A to highlight every single slide in the deck simultaneously.
- Go to the Transitions tab on the top ribbon.
- Look to the far right side of the ribbon for the “Timing” group.
- Under the “Advance Slide” section, uncheck the box for “On Mouse Click.”
- Check the box for “After:” and enter a time (e.g.,
05.00for exactly five seconds).
Now, every slide in your presentation will automatically advance after 5 seconds on the screen.
Step 2: Enable Infinite Kiosk Looping
Now that the slides move on their own, we must command the file to loop back to the start when it hits the final slide, rather than dropping to the ugly black “End of Slide Show” screen.
- Click on the Slide Show tab on the main ribbon.
- Click the Set Up Slide Show button (it has a small icon of a gear).
- A new dialogue window will open. Look at the top left section labeled “Show type.”
- Change the radio button from “Presented by a speaker” to Browsed at a kiosk (full screen).
- Click OK.
The Result
Press F5 on your keyboard to launch the presentation.
Because you selected Kiosk Mode, two critical things have happened:
- The presentation will now run in an infinite loop for 24 hours a day. When it hits the last slide, it will seamlessly jump to Slide 1 without skipping a beat.
- PowerPoint has completely hijacked the input devices. If someone walks up to the computer and clicks the mouse, scrolls the wheel, or mashes random keys on the keyboard, nothing will happen. The presentation will ignore them and continue looping, ensuring your corporate branding is never interrupted by a prankster.
To exit Kiosk Mode and return to the editor, you must explicitly press the Esc key in the top left corner of your keyboard.