MS Office 101

Choose Your Destination

Let's see—a beautiful beach somewhere with a warm tropical breeze...

Keep dreaming.

Unfortunately, I'm not talking about a vacation destination (sorry to let you down). I'm talking about a destination in or out of your PowerPoint presentation that doesn't happen to be the next slide.

We all know about hyperlinks in Web pages—got to love all links—just a quick click and boom, you're off to the next best thing! (Well, OK, not a tropical beach or anything but somewhere else in the land of computers.)

But did you know you can use hyperlinks in MS PowerPoint?

That's right—hyperlinks in PowerPoint!

"Click" and you're off to somewhere new.

What does that mean for my PowerPoint people? Well quite a bit.

You're no longer tied to the linear presentation. (You know, linear is slide 1 then slide 2 then slide 3... well, you get the idea... one slide after another.)

With the idea of a hyperlink you can choose to move anywhere inside or out of the presentation. It's all about where you want to go next—not what slide is next in the lineup.

For example: using last Thursday's idea of custom shows, you could have slides specific to a particular audience and use a hyperlink to get to them when presenting to that audience only. Then use another link back when the custom show is done. Otherwise, use a different hyperlink to skip around them.

Cool! Show what you want, when you need to, without re-working the presentation a million times.

Interested in the PowerPoint hyperlink options?

Was that a "yes" I heard out there?

Good, then let's take a look at the possibilities.

Office Tip of the Day

Link It Up

So, it seems that we're all ready for our adventure into the land of MS PowerPoint hyperlinks, so I'll get the ride underway.

Besides having the presentation open, you need to decide where you need to make a jump.

"Jump where?" you ask.

Well, just about anywhere you might need to go—another slide in the show, a custom show, a URL on the web, a different presentation, or even a file from a completely different program.

Got a slide that needs a link?

Yes? Good.

Now the question is: what to link.

If you want the link to be a few words, then highlight the exact text. If you want the link to be an entire text box then select the outside edge of the text box (so that the cursor is not blinking in the text).

You could also choose to link a picture, drawing object, etc.

There's really a lot of choices—take your pick.

Once you've picked your item to hyperlink select it by clicking on it once.

Time to link: go to the Slide Show menu, Action Settings choice.

The "Action Settings" window will open giving you your options.

As you can see, you have two tabs to choose from. One sets actions for when you click on (Mouse Click) your object and the other sets an action for when you run your mouse pointer over it (Mouse Over).

Choose the tab that suits your needs the best.

Now it's time to tell PowerPoint where you want to go when the selected object is activated.

At the top, just below the "None" choice, you'll see the "Hyperlink to:" option.

Select this choice and the drop down list will become active.

As you can see, there are a lot of choices—but they're all pretty self-explanatory.

Select the item from the list that gives you the action you need.

Immediately, if necessary, a window will open allowing you to set a URL, pick a custom show, choose a slide to jump to, select a file or program to open. Basically, whatever you're looking to accomplish, you'll be given the window appropriate to make your choices.

When you've finished making your selections click OK.

You'll be returned to the Hyperlink window where you can make a few more choices at the bottom concerning sound and highlighting.

Again, make your selection and Click OK.

Hyperlink created.

Keep in mind that if your link sends you down a "side road" in the presentation you may need to go to another slide at the end of the "side road" to create a link that brings you back to the "main highway".

Once you've got your links placed, try running your show and clicking on the linked objects.

You should find yourself jump - jump - jumping around as only a hyperlink will allow you to do.

~ April

PS: I have a suggestion for a technique I use when I want an entire area of a slide (let's say a corner) to be a hyperlink with no visible notations to distract the audience. I will usually draw a rectangle in the corner, using the drawing tools. Then I set the fill to "No Fill" and the line color to "No Line" —making it invisible. Now use the Action Settings to link the invisible rectangle to the appropriate place.

Voila! An invisible link you can choose to use or not—the audience will never know the difference.