How to Use Speaker Notes in PowerPoint

Have you ever been halfway through a presentation, only to realise that you’ve forgotten a key point or stumbled over a statistic? I’ve been there, and I’m sure you have too. Good news, there’s something that can help you with exactly this. Speaker notes.

In this article, we’ll talk about speaker notes, and I’ll guide you from being a hesitant presenter to a confident communicator. We’ll go into why speaker notes matter, advantages, how you can create good speaker notes, and more. So, keep reading!

Why Speaker Notes Matter

+1000 confidence!

Presentations are often packed with a lot of information. Speaker notes act as a safety net, reminding you of key talking points. This will reduce stress and allow you to deliver a presentation confidently.

Smoother transitions

It’s normal to fumble between slides, but this can disrupt your flow, especially if you’re already a little nervous. Speaker notes are great for smoothening your transitions and will help you navigate between topics in your presentation.

More details

Your slides should only have a few words on it. They are just there to compliment your presentation. So, what if you want to dive deeper into complex ideas, or provide additional context on a topic? Speaker notes are the right place for this. Add what you need in your speaker notes, without cluttering your slides.

How to Add Speaker Notes:

While editing your presentation, select the slide you want to add notes to.

Look for the Notes pane below the slide.

Type your speaker notes directly into the Notes pane.

These notes won’t be visible to the audience during the presentation but you can view them in presenter view:

Presenter View:

When you start the slide show and your computer is connected to a projector, Presenter View appears on your screen. In Presenter View, your notes for each slide appear under the next slide. You can scroll through them as needed while presenting.

If Presenter View does not appear, you can try turning it on by going to Slide Show in the ribbon and selecting Use Presenter View.

If you’ve got too much text, you can try adjusting the font size in Presenter View to get more text visible on your screen. You can do this by clicking on the 2 buttons below the speaker notes.

But presenter view works only when you’ve got 2 screens. Which means you need a laptop to work your slideshow, and another screen, tv or projector to display the slides to your audience. So what do you do if you don’t have 2 screens?

Here are some alternatives you can try:

Speaker Notes without Presenter View – Alternate Ideas

Cue Cards

If you don’t have 2 screens, you can always make use of cue cards for your presentation. This gives you the same advantage, and it makes you look kinda cool, if you’ve got your cue cards organized. I’ve got an article on cue cards that you may find interesting, check it out here.

Make sure you use speaker notes in your next presentation as it can truly help you improve your presentation delivery and boost your confidence. I hope the tips provided in this article were useful.

If you need a little help with your presentations, I highly suggest you to check out the rest of this website. SlideBazaar offers tons of presentation themes, templates, a free PowerPoint add-in and more resources to help you create stunning presentations, faster!