Hi Eric,
It depends on what you want to do on your laptop built-in display while the
slide show is running externally.
Assuming that your laptop has the necessary hardware and software for
support of multiple, independent displays and your display control panel
has be correctly configured to enable that functionality, the Presenter
View feature in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 is designed to allow the presenter
to provide various slide show control and management features which are
invisible to the audience viewing the slide show on the independent
external display.
However, an automatic running presentation (where slide timings are used to
automatically advance through the presentation without presenter
interaction) requires that the slide show and/or the Presenter View has the
focus on the computer. If, for example, you switch to Normal view for the
presentation or to another application/tool within the laptops built-in
display, an automatically advancing slide show will pause until it regains
focus.
For more information about Presenter View see the online help topic
"Presenter View: Tools for running a PowerPoint presentation":
http://office.microsoft.com/assistance/preview.aspx?AssetID=HA010565471033&C
TT=1&Origin=EC010229731033&QueryID=oKS45r--b0
If you (or anyone else reading this message) have suggestions as to how
PowerPoint's presenter tools (such as Presenter View in PowerPoint 2002 and
2003) and/or slide show might be improved to support additional scenarios,
don't forget to send your feedback to Microsoft at:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
As with all product suggestions, it's important that you not just state
your wish but also why it is important to you that your product suggestion
be implemented by Microsoft. Microsoft receives thousands of product
suggestions every day and we read each one but, in any given product
development cycle, there are only sufficient resources to address the ones
that are most important to our customers so take the extra time to state
your case as clearly and completely as possible.
IMPORTANT: Each submission should be a single suggestion (not a list of
suggestions)
John Langhans
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Use of any included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm