How to Rehearse PowerPoint Timings to Set Auto-Advance Speeds

You want your PowerPoint slides to advance automatically at a pace that matches your presentation. Manually setting each slide timing is tedious and often results in mismatched narration or dead air. PowerPoint includes a Rehearse Timings feature that records how long you spend on each slide during a practice run and saves those durations for automatic playback. This article explains how to use Rehearse Timings, what happens behind the scenes, and how to fine-tune the recorded speeds for a polished self-running slideshow.

What Rehearse Timings Does and When to Use It

Rehearse Timings is a built-in PowerPoint tool that turns a live practice session into precise timing data. When you start the feature, PowerPoint enters full-screen slideshow mode and displays a Recording toolbar showing the elapsed time for the current slide and the total presentation time. Each time you click or press the Right Arrow key to advance, PowerPoint records the number of seconds you spent on that slide. After you finish the last slide, the program asks whether you want to save those timings. If you answer Yes, every slide gets a specific duration stored in the Transition settings.

This feature is most useful when you are creating a kiosk presentation, a trade-show loop, or a training module that must run without a human presenter. It also works well for narrating a slideshow in advance and synchronizing the timing with recorded audio. No third-party software is required, and the recorded timings can be adjusted later on a per-slide basis.

Before you begin, make sure your slide content is final. Changing slide order or adding new slides after rehearsal will leave those new slides without a recorded time. You can always re-run the rehearsal on the entire deck or on a single slide later.

Steps to Record and Apply Auto-Advance Timings

1. Open the presentation and switch to Slide Sorter view
   Click View > Slide Sorter. This view lets you see all slides at once, which helps confirm the total slide count and order before rehearsing.
2. Start the Rehearse Timings tool
   Go to the Slide Show tab on the ribbon. In the Set Up group, click Rehearse Timings. PowerPoint immediately enters full-screen slideshow mode.
3. Practice your presentation at the intended pace
   Speak your script or mentally review each slide. Click the mouse, press the Right Arrow key, or click the Next button on the Recording toolbar to advance. The timer resets for each new slide. If you need to pause, click the Pause icon on the toolbar. To repeat a slide, click the Repeat button; this resets the current slide timer to zero.
4. Finish the last slide
   After you advance past the final slide, PowerPoint shows a message box displaying the total presentation time. It asks: “Do you want to save the new slide timings to use when you view the slide show?” Click Yes.
5. Verify the timings in Slide Sorter view
   Return to Slide Sorter view. Below each slide thumbnail, you now see a small clock icon and a duration label such as “00:00:05”. This is the recorded time for that slide.
6. Enable automatic advance for the slideshow
   On the Slide Show tab, click Set Up Slide Show. In the Show type section, select “Browsed at a kiosk (full screen)” if the presentation should loop continuously. In the Advance slides section, make sure “Using timings, if present” is selected. Click OK.

Adjusting Individual Slide Timings Manually

1. Select a slide in Normal or Slide Sorter view
   Click the slide whose timing you want to change. To select multiple slides, hold Ctrl and click each one.
2. Open the Transitions tab
   On the ribbon, click the Transitions tab. In the Timing group, locate the After checkbox.
3. Set a new duration
   Check the After box. The field next to it shows the current recorded time. Type a new value in seconds, for example 00:00:10 for 10 seconds. Uncheck the On Mouse Click box if you want the slide to advance only by timing and not by clicking.
4. Apply to all slides if needed
   Click the Apply To All button in the Timing group to copy the same duration to every slide. This overwrites all previously recorded timings.

Common Issues and Things to Avoid With Rehearse Timings

Slides advance too fast or too slow after rehearsal

The recorded timings reflect the exact pace of your practice session. If you paused, coughed, or looked away, that time is included. To fix a single slide, adjust its After value manually as described above. If the entire deck is off, run Rehearse Timings again from the start and try to maintain a steady rhythm.

PowerPoint does not advance automatically even though timings are saved

Two settings must be correct. First, in the Transitions tab, the After checkbox must be checked for each slide. Second, in the Set Up Show dialog, the option “Using timings, if present” must be selected. If you choose “Manually”, PowerPoint ignores all recorded timings and waits for a click.

Timings are lost after saving and reopening the file

This happens when the presentation is saved in the older .ppt format instead of .pptx. The .ppt format does not support per-slide transition timings reliably. Save the file as a PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx) to preserve all timing data.

Item	Rehearse Timings	Manual Transition Timing
Setup method	Live practice run with Recording toolbar	Type a value in the After field for each slide
Speed accuracy	Matches your actual speaking or review pace	Requires estimating seconds per slide
Per-slide adjustment	Possible after recording by editing the After field	Already manual; each slide can have a unique value
Best for	Narrated presentations, kiosks, training modules	Simple timed loops with equal slide durations

You can now record a practice session and save the exact timings for each slide in your PowerPoint presentation. After enabling the “Using timings, if present” setting in Set Up Show, your slides will advance automatically at the recorded speed. For finer control, adjust individual slide durations in the Transitions tab or run a new rehearsal if the overall pace needs to change. Try combining Rehearse Timings with the Record Slide Show feature to add narration that stays synchronized with your auto-advance timings.