Need to Use PowerPoint as a Teleprompter

Making a useful working teleprompter with PowerPoint is not easy especially if you are not skilled.

It's hard to find free prompter software but it does exist and also www.cueprompter.com lets you use your browser as a prompter and lets you control the speed and stop start.

Hello DalmatProd!

Again, this seems to be easy to solve too! Just a couple more steps than the earlier method, but we can solve it.

And of course, even the best of us can be befuddled by the smallest of things! :) 

Let's just go back up to the point where you have added the text in the slide.

Click on the text box once. (Let's ignore the second default text box in my screenshot that Powerpoint gives us. Let it stay there. I forgot to delete it. My bad!) 

Now, again, I have shown each step to follow until getting the arrows, with black circles to show where to click. Hope it helps! 

I believe you may have gotten until this. The reversal of the arrows happens with the next 2 steps. 

With this step, your arrows should be pointing the right way, with the red one on top and the green one below, which basically shows the direction of the animation. 

When you click and drag them, what happens is, PowerPoint tries to show you where you initial text is and where the text will be when the animation begins (position with respect to the green arrow). This is why the "ghost" text appears. As long as you leave the green one alone, you won't be troubled by any ghosts! :) 

So, after you get the arrows, just follow the steps in the earlier answer from the part of seeing the arrows and all should be well! 

Again, in case you need any more help, do let us know.

John,

Thank you very much for the info and the link. I'm one of those dinosaurs who started with Fortran in a major university that had but one computer and many stations, then graduated to Commodore, DOS and Windows, since version 1, WordStar, etc. 

So, I'll had back to the cave, light a nice warm fire and see what CuePrompter has to offer.

Again, many thanks!

Dalmatprod

Uncoded One,

Thank you so much for your time and patience in generating your reply. Yet, with all my computer experience (since Commodore 64's) and knowing how well I do so much other computer work (consulting, install & setup, malware removal, cleanup, etc.), I am amazed at my inability to follow through on your directions! When I look at where the arrows are, I see that they're reversed; the red one is at the top and the green one is towards the bottom! When I attempt to left-click on either and move it, it creates a ghost-like, second vertical line that wherever I'm finally able to drag it to, makes my text to appear as though I have double vision, even though wearing my glasses. 

I've spent the last 30 minutes, attempting to follow your excellent directions, one step-at-a-time, but nothing I do seems to improve my situation. 

When I press F5. the display switches to the "teleprompter" mode, but begins somewhere in my second paragraph and concludes approximately 25% too soon. 

I closed the file, then PowerPoint and restarted both. I again started with your first step and worked my way to the point where I need to drag the arrows. Yet again, my arrows are reversed and any attempt to drag them fails.

Again, my sincere appreciation for your assistance!

Dalmatprod

Right. I think I understood your problem.... I hope so! :) 

After you have put up your entire text in a single slide (somewhat like the below screenshot), I'll try and guide you through some steps to animate the text to move upwards like a teleprompter. 

I shall put up every step as a screenshot and show where to click using red circles. 

After the above screen, select your text box with the required text. 

Then, add the animation for the upward movement as you have done earlier.

After that, you'll get a faint vertical line somewhat like the one in the below screenshot.

The green arrow shows the starting point of the text and the red arrow shows the ending point AFTER the animation of moving upwards is over. The length of the line is directly proportional to how far above the text has to move. 

So, as per your case, I believe it's happening fine till now.

Now extend the line by clicking and dragging the red arrow until you feel that the entire text would have passed through the slide during the animation. The moment you leave the red arrow, a preview animation would be shown. 

If the text is scrolling too fast for you to read now, it's fine. 

In that scenario follow the below steps. (Again, click/change options where I have circled)

And change the option to a timing that makes sure that the scrolling is at a comfortable pace.