Automatically Open .ppt Attachment in Slideshow Mode

In another in our question and answer series, we have a discussion from our readers on how to automatically open a PowerPoint presentation as a slideshow.

Question from Peder Rekop. 

I am a newbie to powerpoint and I have made a presentation (10 pages). I am going to distribute the presentation as an email attachment to my client. But when I open the file, it opens in edit mode, not in slideshow mode. I want my client to be able to open the attachment directly in slideshow mode, without having to manually change to slideshow mode. How do I do this?

Answer given from The Doctors Assistant. 

You need to save your presentation as a “Powerpoint Show”

1. Open the presentation you want to save as a slide show.
2. On the File menu, click Save As.
3. In the Save as type list, click PowerPoint Show. Your slide show file will be saved with a .pps file extension.
4. When you open this file from your desktop, it will automatically start your presentation in slide show view

Question from Richard Hesselton.

Doctors Assistant please can you help me I have a same problem. I am working with PowerPoint 2003 but when I try to do as you say, I have a problem. In my Save As Type list I don’t have an option for PowerPoint show (.pps). I have included the following options that are available when in Save As Type:

1. Presentation
2. Single file web page
3. Web Page
4. PowerPoint95
5. PowerPoint 97-2003 & 95 Presentation
6. Design Template
7. PowerPoint Show (*.pps)

In response to Richard Hesselton by Rudy Styles.

Did you scroll down. The list you show us is what you see without scrolling down. You are looking for PowerPoint Show (*.pps) which is the option after Design Template (*.pot)

1. Presentation
2. Single file web page
3. Web Page
4. PowerPoint 95
5. PowerPoint 97-2003 & 95 Presentation
6. Design Template
7. PowerPoint Show (*.pps)

Question from Amy Robinson.

When I put my powerpoint slideshow on my web site clients downloading it have two options, save and open. When they hit open it opens in edit mode instead of a slideshow. Is there a way to lock the presentation so it ONLY opens as a slideshow even if they open and do not save it to their desktop?

Answer from David Webb.

As mentioned above it is very easy to set your PowerPoint to only open in slideshow mode.

Here is how you do this:

1. Open your PowerPoint presentation.
2. Click the “File” menu in the upper left
3. Click the “Save As…” option
4. The “Save As…” dialog box opens up
5. At the very bottom of the box, click the drop down arrow on the “Save as type:”
6. Scroll down till you see “PowerPoint Show (*.pps)”
7. Enter your file name in the “File name:” box
8. Click the “Save” button

Now whenever you or your clients open this file it will start in the slideshow view automatically. Make sure that you select the file “.pps” not “.ppt” to give to others.

Question from Kendo Han.

I have saved my ppt presentation as a *.pps however when I open the new file, it does not automatically start as a slideshow. I have a scroll bar and a toolbar with File/Edit/Browse/Window/Help as my options and when I go to Browse and select full screen, I can view the slideshow as a presentation. I’m a bit confused as I think I’ve followed the steps correctly, but am having no luck.

Answer from John Wilson.

You might want to check in Slide show > Set Up Show that you DONT have “Show in a window” checked.

Publishing to Sharepoint

Question from Aldrin Thomas. 

Saving as .pps has the desired effect when I open the Slideshow from a drive or an email attachment. However, if I publish it to a Microsoft Sharepoint document library, it still opens direct in Edit mode. The file extension is correctly set to “pps”. I have googled it a little bit but it seems like a bug between how Sharepoint handles the file or how it is opened. Any idea what’s going on?

Answer thanks to Doctor.

I’m not sure if this will work on SharePoint, but I’ve had luck getting a PowerPoint slideshow to open correctly when accessed via a web browser from the local intranet by creating a shortcut to the file, and then linking to the shortcut in the HTML, instead of the actual file. Instead of linking to say, presentation.pps, I link to the shortcut, presentation.pps.Lnk. Shortcuts, of course, have the usually hidden .Lnk extension.