Make the pointer or cursor go away (screenshow)

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Problem

You have a presentation you want to use as a kiosk on a system that has a touch-screen or other input device. For that or some other reason, you don't want PowerPoint to show the usual pointer cursor.

Solution

You can temporarily hide the pointer this way:

• Start the slideshow then right-click anywhere on the screen
• Point to Pointer Options
• If using PowerPoint 2000 or earlier, click Hidden; if using PowerPoint 2002 or later, Point to Arrow Options, and then click Hidden

The pointer will stay hidden for the duration of the screenshow unless someone changes it back. Linking to another slide show may also cause the pointer to become visible again.

For a more aggressive solution, you can change the Windows cursor. See Control Panel, Mouse Settings, the Pointers tab.

If you have a copy of VB (or probably one of the other MS programming languages) it includes IMAGEDIT.EXE, a little editor that lets you create/edit icons and ... bingo! ... cursor files. There are also various freeware and shareware cursor editing programs available on the web.

Open an existing cursor file (from C:\Windows\Cursors) and delete all but a tiny dot or everything, save it as a new CUR file and select that as your cursor.

In case you don't have a cursor editor, I've put a couple tiny cursors here, in tinycursors.zip - 358 bytes! containing nothing.cur (an invisible cursor) and dot.cur (a single-pixel cursor). Right-click the link and choose "Save target as" to download the file to your computer.

Unzip it to a convenient location and put 'em to work.

So select a new cursor in Windows, choose Start, Settings, Control Panel, Mouse. Click the Pointers tab and browse to the .CUR file you want to select.

Chirag Dalal's OfficeOne Shortcuts for PowerPoint includes a shortcut for hiding or showing the pointer, along with dozens of other useful shortcut keys.

Search terms:pointer,cursor,mouse,screen,show,screenshow,slide,slideshow

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

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