The moment you hit “Present,” a completely different set of shortcuts takes over — none of the editing shortcuts (bold, copy, group objects) apply anymore. These are the ones that actually matter while you’re standing in front of an audience: starting the show, jumping to a slide, blanking the screen, and using the laser pointer without ever touching the mouse.
Building the deck instead? See the full list of PowerPoint editing shortcuts — a completely separate set of keys for a completely separate mode.
Starting and ending the show
| Action | Windows | Mac |
|---|---|---|
| Start from the beginning | F5 | Cmd + Shift + Return |
| Start from the current slide | Shift + F5 | Cmd + Return |
| Start in Presenter View | Alt + F5 | Option + Return |
| End the presentation | Esc | Esc |
Moving between slides
Any of these advance or go back — use whichever is closest to your hand, they all do the same thing.
| Action | Windows | Mac |
|---|---|---|
| Next slide/animation | N, Enter, Page Down, →, ↓, or Space | N, Space, or → |
| Previous slide/animation | P, Page Up, ←, ↑, or Backspace | P, ←, or Delete |
| Jump to a specific slide | Type the slide number, then Enter | Type the slide number, then Return |
| Jump to the next hidden slide | H | H |
| First slide | Home | fn + ← |
| Last slide | End | fn + → |
The “type a number, then Enter” trick is the one most people never discover — if someone asks you to jump back to slide 12 mid-Q&A, you can type 12 then Enter instead of clicking backward through eleven slides while everyone watches.
Blanking the screen
The fastest way to pull attention off the slide and onto you — for a pause, a question, or a side conversation that doesn’t belong on screen.
| Action | Windows | Mac |
|---|---|---|
| Black screen (toggle) | B or Period (.) | B, Shift+B, or Period (.) |
| White screen (toggle) | W or Comma (,) | W, Shift+W, or Comma (,) |
Press the same key again — or just advance to the next slide — to bring the screen back.
Pointer and annotation tools
Turn your cursor into a laser pointer or a pen without opening a single menu.
| Action | Windows | Mac |
|---|---|---|
| Laser pointer | Ctrl + L | Cmd + L |
| Pen (draw on the slide) | Ctrl + P | Cmd + P |
| Arrow pointer (back to normal) | Ctrl + A | Cmd + A |
| Eraser | Ctrl + E | — |
| Erase all ink on the slide | E | Shift + E |
| Hide the pointer and navigation buttons | Ctrl + H | Cmd + I |
| Show or hide ink markup | Ctrl + M | — |
Careful: Ctrl+L means “laser pointer” here, but the exact same keys mean “align text left” back in editing mode. It’s not a conflict — they’re separate modes — but it’s the one shortcut worth double-checking if muscle memory from editing carries over mid-presentation.
One more thing worth knowing
Shift+F10 (Windows) opens the right-click context menu without a mouse — useful if you need to jump to “See All Slides” or change the pointer options and your hand is nowhere near a trackpad.
Practice building the deck, keep this list handy for showtime
These presentation-mode shortcuts are few enough that most presenters just keep this page open in a second tab the first couple of times. The interactive drilling we use for other shortcut sets is built around editing-mode shortcuts (typing, formatting, navigating) rather than live-presentation controls, so for this particular list, reading it once or twice before your next talk is genuinely enough. If you want the drillable version, it’s the PowerPoint editing shortcuts that has the practice trainer built in.