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Services and Service Items

Auto Advance to Next Item

The  Auto Advance function in Presenter instructs a service item to go to another specified item without any manual operator input. In order to set Auto Advance, the item cannot contain a Lyric or Scripture Foreground. Eligible items can be set to auto-advance after a set amount of seconds or, if you're using a video as the Background, when the video is done playing. You'll find the Auto Advance setting on the bottom left side of the editor, under Advanced Options.

Once Auto Advance is turned on for a item, you'll see a clock icon to the left of the item name in the left service pane. When you click on a service item and start presenting it, you'll see a countdown timer at the very top of the service pane indicating how much time is left before it will move on to the next item. Both of these are illustrated in the screenshot below.

The screenshot also demonstrates how to use the Bulk Service Item Editor to set Auto Advance for multiple items at once. Again, certain items are not eligible for Auto Advance, so you won't be able to successfully apply this function to those items through the Bulk Editor - the Bulk Editor will work best for applying Auto Advance on multiple Background items.

For Foreground items: Slides, PowerPoint, and Google Slides items are eligible for Auto Advance, but you won't be able to apply Auto Advance to those items from the Bulk Editor.

Creating a Loop

To create a loop, make sure that the last item of the loop is set to go back to the first item of the loop. All other items should be set to go to "Next Item."

In the screenshot above, the first 5 slides are being set to "Next Item." Hit Apply to save. Then, you would go and select just the 6th slide, "Volunteer Sign Ups," and have that one go to either "First Item" or the specific "Welcome Slide." ("First Item" refers to the very first item in the entire service, so if that's not where you want to loop back to, select the correct item under "Specific Item.")

How to Use Auto Advance with Slides

You can apply Auto Advance to items with Slides, PowerPoint, or Google Slides in the Foreground. In this case, use the Auto Advance setting that appears right below the Choose Presentation box, not the Auto Advance that shows up under Advanced Options. The latter Auto Advance box will display a message stating that you cannot apply Auto Advance on items containing Foregrounds but this is in reference to Lyric and Scripture items. The Auto Advance settings under the Choose Presentation box were added to bypass this.

Alternatively, you can make your slides in PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slides, and export* each slide as an individual JPEG. Then import each individual JPEG to Presenter as a separate media file/image. Once imported, set each media file as the Background of its own separate item. The result should look like what's pictured in the screenshot above.

*PowerPoint has an option to export each slide as an image in bulk, while Google Slides requires that you export each slide one by one. So, if you're using Google Slides and you have a lot of slides, you may want to download it and open it in PowerPoint to complete the export to JPEG.

Note: "Services" were formerly known as "Cue Lists," and "Service Items" were formerly known as "Cues."

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