Body
Issue/Question
How do I use the Rehearse with Presenter Coach feature in PowerPoint?
Environment
Resolution
Rehearse with Presenter Coach
- Open your presentation in PowerPoint for the web.
- Sign in with a personal Microsoft account (hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com, msn.com), or an Office 365 work or school account.
- On the Slide Show tab, select Rehearse with Coach. (If you've turned off the Simplified Ribbon, you don't have a Slide Show tab; instead use the View tab to start Presenter Coach.)
- The presentation opens in a full-screen view, similar to Slide Show.
- Select Get Started at the lower right when you are ready to begin rehearsing.
- As you speak, Coach gives on-screen guidance (in the lower-right corner of the window) about pacing, inclusive language, use of profanity, filler words, and whether you're reading the slide text.
- When you're through, exit the full-screen view. Coach opens a Rehearsal Report that summarizes what is observed.
Tips
- Sign in with a Microsoft account (hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com, msn.com) or an Office 365 work or school account. You can view and edit a presentation for free in a web browser by saving the file to OneDrive and using PowerPoint for the web to open it.
- All you need is a microphone in your computer that can hear your speech.
- We recommend that you rehearse in a quiet place with a microphone.
- After you close the rehearsal report, it disappears. If you want to save a copy of it, you must take a screenshot.
Other things to remember
- Currently, Presenter Coach only understands English, and it's only available when your Office user interface language is English. See Change the language Office uses for help with the Office user interface language setting.
- Coach works best with one speaker rehearsing. It may not work well if more than one person is rehearsing at a time.
- Coach will continue to learn as folks like you use it, and it will add more kinds of suggestions in the future.
- Unlike the Rehearse Timings feature, Presenter Coach doesn't add timings to your slides. Presenter Coach is for practicing and feedback. It doesn't prepare a slide show to be run automatically.
Recommendations
- To relax and slow yourself down when you're nervous, take a deep breath.
- Try to plan a suitable transitional phrase you can use as you move to the next slide, even something as simple as, "Let's talk about (the subject of the next slide)."
- Recognize that the passion you feel about your subject may cause you to speak rapidly or excitedly, but your audience may not be able to keep up with what you're saying in that case.
- Pause if you need a moment to gather your thoughts. Quiet moments don't adversely affect your presentation.
- To make yourself more comfortable with your material, make time to practice more before the actual presentation.
- Presenter Coach gives you a gentle nudge by suggesting specific replacement terms for certain words. You make the final decision about what words to use in your presentation.
- Don't read aloud long batches of text. Let the audience read it themselves. Summarize or explain the meaning of the text.
- It's all right to repeat shorter bits of text from a slide, such as a title or bullet point.
Important information about Presentation Coach
Presentation Coach is one of the cloud-enhanced features in Office 365 and is powered by Microsoft Speech Services. Your speech utterances will be sent to Microsoft to provide you with this service. For more information, see Make Office Work Smarter for You.