Arrow keys don't work in slide view mode in powerpoint

Anonymous
2013-02-24T03:42:39+00:00

My powerpoint used to work fine but recently I am unable to advance or move my slides backwards in the Slide view mode with arrow keys, space bar and return.  Nothing seems to work.  I cannot even exit the presentation with the ESC key.  I need to use the cursor to exit presentation.  Because of this situation, I cannot use the remote control to advance my slides.  PLS HELP!!!

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2017-06-01T06:50:19+00:00

I have fixed the problem on my side following these steps:

  • Open the "Slide show" tab in the ribbon
  • Click on "Set Up Slide Show"
  • Make sure that following options are selected "Show type" = presented by the speaker (full screen) and "Advance slides" = manually

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-02-26T20:06:11+00:00

    Hi Smurray,

    Many thanks for your reply. I am wondering if you could further try after relaunching PowerPoint or rebooting the OS.

    If it's still not working, could you try just keep PowerPoint as the only one running Application to narrow down if the problem is still caused by other Applications ?

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-02-27T04:36:24+00:00

    I and a friend are having this problem as well. We initially thought it was only on a retina MacBook Pro 15, with 10.8.2 and 14.3.1. The arrow keys stop working and so does a Master Cue or other external USB 'clicker' devices as well. This doesn't happen with Keynote and the machines are all offline during use, so DropBox is greyed-out and not attempting to sync, and it doesn't appear to be any new preferences thing, as that hasn't updated and doesn't affect Keynote. (Also, you can still successfully use the mouse to click on the on-screen back and next arrows when in presenter view.)

    This also happens on several MacBook Airs of various iterations as well. (two flavors of Core i7 and a Core2 Duo)

    The funny thing is I noticed it at the same time as I started seeing the transition 'tearing' at the bottom 1/6th or the screen in show mode running to a projector. That seems to be exclusive to the 15" Retina MacBook Pro.

    These issues continue to happen after full reboots with PPT as the ONLY app running. I've even done a PMU reset or SMC reset on the machines figuring it was a USB bus issue or something like that.

    I wanted to add my 2 cents so I could get subscribed to this topic!

    Thanks,

    joe

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-02-27T12:31:18+00:00

    "Just want to know if all of you are using DropBox.  It seems DropBox file syncing could be at least one of the causes." 

    Must be a combination of factors because I have DropBox and hasn't affected any of my presentations.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-02-27T18:27:50+00:00

    Really sorry for all the inconveniences.

    Yes, it seems DropBox is not the root cause of the keyboard issue and it starts to appear since 14.3 update. It has been reported that 14.2.3 doesn't suffer this issue. We are investigating on the root cause.

    As for the transition issue, it's specific to Mac with NVidia video card and running Mountain Lion. It seems to be a Nvidia OpenGL Mountain Lion driver bug. This issue has been reported to Apple.

    In next update, there should be a patch for working around this transition issue (may still need NVidia's driver bug fix to fully address the issue though)

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