Building Hidden-slide Navigation

To demonstrate the hidden-slide approach, we'll start by building a simple three-slide presentation. Create a new, blank slide show and give it two additional slides (total of three slides—Figure 1). Format the backgrounds of the slides to be red, blue, and yellow, respectively (Figure 2).

Now right-click the second slide's thumbnail, the blue one, and from the menu select Hide Slide (Figure 3). The slide’s thumbnail number should display with a dashed line through it (Figure 4). Note that hidden slides remain visible while in edit mode but do not display while running the slide show. PowerPoint essentially skips over any slides that display a dashed line through the slide thumbnail number. If you wish to unhide the slide in the future, simply repeat the above procedure (right-click the slide thumbnail and again select Hide Slide).

That's all it takes to hide a slide. Let's see what the show looks like now. Click the slide 1 thumbnail, start the slide show, and scroll through the slides. Notice that PowerPoint skips the blue slide entirely, as expected.

You eventually will fill the hidden slide with content that is not part of the regular presentation, but that might be useful for optional display, such as additional detail or an example that can be shown if time allows. We'll just leave the slide blank here, for simplicity.