Most PowerPoint users take the stage with the mindset of a pro golfer just trying to shoot par: Don’t take any dumb risks. Be conservative. Walk away safely. In PowerPoint terms, that translates into avoiding anything too technically fancy while flipping through your slides.

That’s an understandable approach since it often feels like courting disaster if you stand in front of a crowd and try complex functions when you’re getting along just fine without them.

But you can make presentations more interactive and interesting with a few basic tricks. A little practice with these tools and you’ll be comfortable enough to step in front of any audience with the attitude of a golfer playing for eagle on every hole.

Make Your Mark

Interacting with your slides makes information feel more relevant. One trick is to walk up and point to on-screen items. If you can’t approach the screen, try drawing right on the slides to circle or underline items. To access the on-screen pen, right-click while a slide show is running and choose Pointer Options and the type of pen you want to use. Change the line color with the Ink Color option on the menu. Remove the marks by right-clicking and choosing Pointer Options and Erase All Ink on Slide.

Put All Eyes On You

When it’s time to drive a point home, you want the audience’s eyes on you, not the screen. Getting their attention is iffy if they see a slide. So the secret is blanking the screen. To turn the screen black, press B; to turn it white, press W. Press any key or the mouse button to bring the slide back into view.

When giving a slide show, you can instantly jump to another slide by right-clicking and choosing the slide’s number.

Jump Among Slides

This tool is handy during Q&A periods. When someone asks about a point you made, you may want to go back to the relevant slide to review the information. You can go right to the correct slide by right-clicking and choosing Go To Slide. Scroll through the list to find the slide you need and click it. When you’re ready to return to the slide you came from, right-click and choose Last Viewed.

View Multiple Programs

This one seems simple, but we meet a lot of PowerPoint users who don’t know about it. You can jump between your presentation and other running programs by pressing ALT-TAB. This works well when you’re showing something like live Web pages between slides. Just hold down the ALT key and keep pressing TAB until the icon for the right program is highlighted. If you have multiple documents (or Web pages) open in a program, note the text displayed in the ALT-TAB box so you can pick the right window.

Use Secret Slides

Hidden slides are a good way to customize slide shows for various groups. Let’s say you’re giving a standard safety lecture to various company departments and decide that the accounting team could do without the slides about incinerator safety. You can hide those slides when giving the presentation. Go to the right slide and click Hide Slide on the ribbon’s Slide Show tab. To quickly hide something like the last 20 slides of the presentation, click Set Up Slide Show. In the Show Slides section, indicate the slides you want to include.

To reveal a hidden slide, right-click, choose Go To Slide, and pick the appropriate slide. (Hidden slides have parentheses around their numbers.)

Work With Two Monitors

Try using two monitors to let you see both the slide show and something called Presenter View. On the monitor only you can see, PowerPoint shows you what’s coming up in the next bullet item and slide, and it lets you read your speaker notes as you go. If your computer is already set up for multiple monitors, you can start using Presenter View by clicking Set Up Slide Show on the Slide Show tab and clicking Show Presenter View.