I just got a Genius Ring Presenter and need to use it for a presentation next week. It has four buttons I'll call N,S,E,W surrounding a middle button I'll call M that also has trackball capabilities. However, all I need to do is go forwards and backwards between slides.

This worked fine on the Macbook in slide show mode. But when I hooked up an external screen and ran through a presentation multiple times, it changed into a mode (meaning of buttons) that I was unfamiliar with several times and I do not know what made it do so. The only way I could find of resetting it to the mode I expected was to exit and restart the show from the laptop. I want to know what causes it to change modes and how to prevent it, avoid it, or change it back without touching the laptop.

I know the Ring Presenter has two settings itself: This is not the cause of my problem. I left it in P(resentation) setting throughout.

When I started, it was in the expected mode: E was slide forward, W was slide backward, and M was slide forward. That's what I want. That is the advertised assignments, with M being "left mouse button click". But at one point it changed into a mode where it ignored M and only E and W functioned. Another time it changed into a mode where M and E worked, but W didn't, meaning I had no way to go backward.

One time it seemed that it switched modes after I pressed S (laser pointer), but I'm not sure. Pressing all of the buttons on the ring and switching the ring itself off and on again had no effect. I also made sure the cursor was on the external screen (because behavior changes once it comes back onto the laptop). I have little experience with remotes in combination with external screens so I suspect this is more to do with PowerPoint than some feature or failing of the Ring Presenter, at least for the time being.

This is a Macbook Pro with Powerpoint 2011 on OS X 10.8.2.