At one time or another, every user of Microsoft PowerPoint has been frustrated by the pop-up navigation menu that appears at the bottom left-hand corner of a slide show. It can spoil the effect of a slick-looking presentation and has a habit of getting in the way as you point to items on that part of the screen.

This article explains the function of the pop-up menu and suggests ways in which it may be suppressed or replaced by your own custom navigation buttons.

Firstly, what exactly is the pop-up navigation menu for?

Before you decide to remove the pop-up menu, let’s firstly ensure you understand what it has to offer. As the slides below demonstrate, this menu provides a handy way to highlight text and move between slides in a presentation. In particular, the Go to Slide option can prove useful if you suddenly realise you need to jump between slides that are a long way apart in your presentation. It avoids having to scroll through dozens of irrelevant pages whilst trying to think of something witty to say to your audience.
 

Cancelling the pop-up navigation menu

But if you have no requirement to highlight text and your presentation is well ordered, you may think it unnecessary for these navigation buttons to be visible as you deliver your presentation. If this is your decision, there are three ways to cancel them. Please note these directions may need some tweaking or interpretation according to your version of PowerPoint.

1. Choose Slide Show | Set Up Show and select Kiosk mode. This mode is generally intended for slide shows that run on a continuous loop at trade shows where you don’t want people to fiddle. The slides will still advance on timings (if you have configured these) but other means of controlling the slides (including the arrows on your keyboard) will be deactivated. If you select the Kiosk mode, you’ll need to insert your own navigation buttons to move around your presentation (see next section).

2. Choose Tools | Options (or just PowerPoint options in PowerPoint 2007)) and select the View tab. In the Slide Show area, remove the checkmark next to "Show popup toolbar". Click OK.

3. If you forget to implement either the first or second points above, you can press Ctrl + H once your slide show has started. This will hide the mouse cursor and navigation buttons on the bottom left of the slide show window (although this does not apply to Kiosk mode)
 

3.  In the Action Settings dialog box (see image), do one of the following:

•  To choose the behaviour of the action button when you click it in Slide Show view, click the Mouse Click tab.

•  To choose the behaviour of the action button when you move the pointer over it in Slide Show view, click the Mouse Over tab.

4. To choose the action that will take place when you click or move the pointer over the action button, do one of the following:

•  To use the shape without a corresponding action, click None.

•  To create a hyperlink, click Hyperlink to, and then select the destination (for example, the next slide, the previous slide, the last slide, or another PowerPoint presentation) that you want the hyperlink action to go to.