Problems Projecting a PowerPoint (2015) Presentation to External Monitor/Display/Projector

If you use multiple desktops, make sure in the Option for Powerpoint in the Dock is set so that it is assigned to 'All Desktops' If this is not the case, it may not work right. I have had this issue on old and new Macs alike (both air and pro), and across different OS versions. This change has worked for me so far.

You solve my problem! Thanks!

That last one (setting PowerPoint to use 'All Desktops') worked for me--thanks!

I have had the same problem the last two days with two different projectors; an NEC and Epson. The only way I could get it to work was booting into Windows 10 via Parallels and opening the presentation. Everything works fine through Windows 10. Hopefully, Apple will post a fix soon! I don't like to run Windows any more than I absolutely have to.

It sounds like your computer is configured so that the internal display and projector are not mirrored. If I am correct, try opening the Display control panel in System Preferences and select mirror. Then run the presentation. If this doesn’t work try asking your question at Microsoft’s Mac Office support site. They have some very knowledgeable MVPs there.

Thank you for your response but i get the same result regardless of whether mirroring is on or off. I will check with the MS Office team per your suggestion.

I too had this problem very recently. When I launched a presentation, either with displays mirrored or not, both the slide and the presenter view would show on my laptop screen and nothing on the projector (other than a blank Mac desktop).

I was able to fix this on the fly by the following:

1. Start the presentation.
2. Click on the presenter view on the laptop which then hides the main slide.
3. Click 'Swap View' on the presenter mode screen. For me, this forced the slides to show on both displays, albeit the presenter mode was on the projector and the slide was on my laptop display. If your desired slide shows up on the projector, then you are done. If not -
4. Move the mouse over to the presenter view on the projector screen and hit 'Swap Views' one more time. This switches the screens and voila, your desired view is on the projector, and presenter view on your laptop.

This is a little cumbersome to do, however, it works in a pinch.

Hopefully this glitch will be fixed in future revisions.

I figured this out as well, but it is really cumbersome. Also, the slide that is supposed to show on the external window often shows up on the presenter and covers the 'Swap View' button. One way that makes a little easier is to right click (or two-finger click on a trackpad) to bring up the context menu and select 'Swap View' there, then do it again (on the same screen--no need to go over to the projector screen). Still clumsy, but much easier than having to get the cursor to the on-screen button on two different screens.

Thanks for this solution!

Hint for others with the same problem: I had to activate a further desktop (beyond what is automatically created when you use more than one screen) before the option to show PPT on all desktops was shown. But then the trick worked.

You're the best! That was exactly the problem.