As we discussed on Friday, there are a couple of scenarios where it would be helpful to blank out the PowerPoint screen, without actually turning off the slide projector:
- You’ve gone through the process of making sure your slides are set up properly, but now we’re entering a portion of the meeting where it’s not appropriate to have them showing on the screen. However, if you turn off the projector, then you will have to fumble with getting it warmed up again when you’re ready to start the presentation.
- You’re at the end of your speech — or at a break when the focus has shifted to audience discussion — and you don’t want the slides to be a distraction for the audience. So you want to stop the slideshow, but reserve the option of going back to your slides at a moment’s notice.
You can read a more detailed explanation, but the essential point to remember is “b for black (or blank)” and “w for white.”
When you are in presentation mode, with your slides all ready to go, you can press the key for the letter “b” and the screen will go blank. Press any other key, and your slideshow will reappear. Pressing “w” for a white screen works the same way.
The other shortcut you might want to be familiar is F5 (one of the function keys at the top of the keyboard) for starting a slideshow. This toggles you from editing mode to presentation mode. To exit your presentation and go back to editing mode, press the ESC key.
F5 will start the presentation from the beginning. If you want to restart your presentation from the current slide, you can press Shift-F5.
You don’t not have to remember all these things to do a PowerPoint presentation because all these things can also be done through various menus and buttons. But if you can remember them, they can be handy shortcuts.
I found a bunch more PowerPoint pointers and links on a New Zealand district Toastmasters site.
Club Awesome Toastmasters
Green: 1 
Yellow: 1:30 
Red: 2