Switching from Presenter Tool changes display to mirrored.

[lower]

I am running PowerPoint 2008 on an iMac with an external second display at a different resolution than the main display. When I want to switch to another application in the middle of the presentation (to show a movie, etc) the displays switch to mirrored mode. How do I prevent this from happening?

 

[Matt]

I sure wish I knew and that Microsoft would chime in or fix this awful functionality. I say that because the problem occurred way back in PP 2004, so I was really hoping 2008 would address the issue. In fact, they made it worse! In 2004, you could bypass this issue by holding down the option key before starting your slide show and it would play it without the speaker helper app (timer, next slide, etc). In 2008 that bypass no longer works. I don't mean to be too critical, but it really is an awful shortcoming of the software. Microsoft - PLEASE let us know of a work-around or add one in on your next update!!!

 

[paul-ny]

I was thinking of starting a new thread but my problem is similar to this one. I keep finding that when I set a projector to a high resolution, start a Powerpoint (2004) presentation and during it switch over to Photoshop, all of a sudden the projector is displaying at 800 x 600 so that Photoshop's dock disappears for lack of space and its palettes use up almost the entire screen. I can't keep track: I think that this doesn't always happen but I have no idea when it does and when it doesn't.

I believe it happened on earlier Powerpoint as well (I didn't know so well then how to adjust display resolution) and it has happened using both Tiger and Leopard on the Mac.