With the advent of TED talks, YouTube tutorials, and Online Courses; presentations are now becoming more professional. Modern audiences expect live presentations to be delivered with better timing. Just the fact that a presentation went smoothly can affect the image of both the person who delivers it and even the subject of the presentation.

This is less relevant in regards to regular presentations and more important when delivering presentations to sell a product or an idea.

If you like your presentations to look sharp, then you’ll benefit from being able to record and rehearse PowerPoint presentations. Especially when these features are built right into PowerPoint.

What Does It Mean To Rehearse a PowerPoint Presentation?

The main purpose of rehearsing PowerPoint presentations is to make sure that the presentation fits into the amount of time you’ve planned for it. Another benefit is that this puts pressure on you and does prevents you from going off in a tangent.

The Slide Timing feature can be used to record when the slides should change. Once recorded, you can make slides change automatically. This will help you move from one slide to another in the actual presentation and allow you to present it the way you practiced it.

How To Use The Rehearse Timings Feature in PowerPoint?

These instructions should work in PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2010, PowerPoint 2013, and PowerPoint 2016.

Click the SLIDE SHOW tab on the Ribbon toolbar and then click the Rehearse Timings button as shown below

Rehearse -- PowerPoint 2013 - SLIDE SHOW - Rehearse Timings - FreePowerPointTemplates

The presentation should open in show mode with a small recording dialog on the upper-left corner of the screen

Rehearse -- PowerPoint 2013 - SLIDE SHOW - Rehearse Timings - Recording - FreePowerPointTemplates

Hover over one of the buttons and its label should show up. All the buttons are self explanatory.

The first button from the left is the Next button. It loads the next slide.

You can pause recording the presentation by clicking the Pause button.

To restart the recording for the current slide, click the Repeat button.

Once you reach the end of the presentation, a box should appear to tell the total time of the presentation you recorded and if you want to keep the timings.

Rehearse -- PowerPoint 2013 - SLIDE SHOW - Rehearse Timings - Recording - 2 v2 - FreePowerPointTemplates

How To Turn Recorded Timings ON and OFF?

Once the timings have been recorded, the slide show will advance automatically the next time you start presenting from that presentation file. You can turn this feature off by using these instructions.

Click the SLIDE SHOW tab on the Ribbon toolbar and then uncheck the Use Timings box as shown below. Now you will be able to change the slides manually again.

Rehearse -- PowerPoint 2013 - SLIDE SHOW - Rehearse Timings - Recording - 3 - FreePowerPointTemplates

(Please click here to download the template used in this example)