Adding Links in Presentation


With PowerPoint, you can add features quickly to your presentation that are unique to the Internet. Creating a home page, adding hyperlinks to Internet resources, and building action buttons to control the presentation are all tasks you need to learn to build an Internet-ready presentation.

Creating a Home Page

A home page is a Web page that acts as an introduction to your presentation. It serves as a type of table of contents for the presentation, providing hyperlinks to the important components . A home page should contain only the main items of interest, so try to keep the home page list of topics as short as possible. Four or five main topic items, at most, are best.

One way to create a home page quickly is to use the summary slide feature of PowerPoint. The summary slide feature enables you to select specific slides, and PowerPoint will create a new slide using each selected slide title as a bullet item on the new slide. Another term for this feature is agenda slide.

To create a summary slide to use for a home page for your Internet presentation, use the following steps:

  1. Switch to Slide Sorter view by selecting View, Slide Sorter from the menu or clicking the Slide Sorter button.

  2. Select the slides you want to include on the home page (hold down the Ctrl key and click on the slides you're selecting).

  3. Click the Summary Slide button on the Slide Sorter toolbar to create the summary slide. (See Figure 30.6.)

    Figure 30.6. Click the Summary Slide button to create a slide with a bullet item by using the title of each selected slide.

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  4. After the summary slide has been generated, you may want to move the slide to the beginning of the presentation.

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If you select more than eight slides when creating the home page list, more than one summary slide will be generated. Because Internet browsers enable viewers to scroll the presentation screen, you might want to combine the separate summary screens into one long slide.


After the summary slide has been generated, you should change the generic title Summary Slide to something that is more relevant to your presentation's subject. Simply double-click the summary slide in Slide Sorter view to change to Normal view. You can then edit the title as desired. After you have created a home page, you can format each bullet item with a hyperlink action setting to take your viewers to the appropriate slide, as discussed in the next section.

Hyperlinking to Presentation Resources

A hyperlink is a connection between two locations; your presentation viewers can use hyperlinks to guide them to other presentation slides, Internet pages, or even computer files. After you have created the home page for your presentation, you should format each bullet item as a hyperlink to the appropriate page.

Creating a hyperlink is very simple; just follow these steps:

  1. Select a presentation item to associate with the hyperlink, such as the first bullet item on your summary slide/home page.

  2. Choose Insert, Hyperlink from the menu or click the Insert Hyperlink button on the standard toolbar to open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

  3. Click the Place in This Document button, as shown in Figure 30.7.

    Figure 30.7. Use the Insert Hyperlink dialog box to format any PowerPoint object as a hyperlink.

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  4. Select the page you want to link to from the list of slides.

  5. Change the display text, if desired.

  6. Create a screen tip, if desired, by clicking the ScreenTip button, entering a tip, and then clicking OK.

  7. Click the OK button to complete the hyperlink.

PowerPoint enables you to create hyperlinks that point to many types of resources, including

  • Presentation slides

  • Internet Web pages or resources

  • Email addresses

Slides

A hyperlink can point to any existing presentation slide. In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box, you can select the self-explanatory First Slide, Last Slide, Next Slide, or Previous Slide. These options enable you to provide basic navigation for your viewers. Because most home pages are the first page and "table of contents" of a Web site, you might consider putting a link on each slide that will take your viewer back to the First Slide. Each of your slides should also contain a link to another slide, depending on the course you want your viewers to take while viewing your presentation.

Internet Resources

The most common hyperlink destination added to Internet presentations is the URL hyperlink. A URL (uniform resource locator) is the unique address for an Internet resource. When possible, type the full path to the resource so that there are no name conflicts if the presentation is moved to another location. For example, http://www. sams .com/ is the full path that points to the main index document for the Sams Publishing home page.

To add an Internet resource, use the following steps:

  1. Select a presentation item to associate with the hyperlink, such as the first bullet item on your summary slide/home page.

  2. Choose Insert, Hyperlink from the menu or click the Insert Hyperlink button on the standard toolbar to open the Insert Hyperlink dialog box.

  3. Click the Existing File or Web Page button, as shown in Figure 30.8.

    Figure 30.8. The Insert Hyperlink dialog box also enables you to insert a link to any Web page available on the Internet.

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  4. Enter the complete Web address in the filename text box or select a Web address from the list of recent files or browsed Pages.

  5. Click the OK button when finished.

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The URL must be entered as it appears in the address box for the page. URL addresses are also case-sensitive. An easy way to get the address absolutely correct is to copy the address from your Web browser.


Using and Adding Action Buttons or Navigation Controls

You can supply action buttons to help your viewers find useful features. When a user clicks an action button, PowerPoint performs a particular action. There are standard icon images that represent common functions or features, or you can create your own custom button image. Here's a list of some common action buttons, although there are several to choose from:

  • Home

  • Back or Previous

  • Forward or Next

  • Beginning

  • End

Navigation controls can be added to your slide to enable viewers in your audience to view every slide in your presentation without using the Slide Navigation pane. This is necessary, especially for those viewers who do not have browsers that support frames . If you find that you need to add navigation controls to your presentation, it is an easy and painless task. You simply insert a button on each slide that your audience can click to move on to the next slide. Although you need at least one button to go to the Next slide, you are not limited to the number of buttons you can put on your slides.

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You can really jazz up your presentation by adding navigation controls. These controls enable the viewer to go to the next slide as well as another section of the presentation.


Use the following steps to add a navigation button to a slide:

  1. Display the slide, in PowerPoint, that requires a navigation button.

  2. Select AutoShapes, Action buttons from the Drawing toolbar.

  3. Click the appropriate button. Figure 30.9 shows the Next button being chosen .

    Figure 30.9. Select the action button that best represents the type of navigation you want the viewer to performfor example, move to the next slide.

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  4. Drag the mouse on the slide to draw the button, just as if you were drawing any other AutoShape.

  5. When you release the mouse button, the Action Settings dialog box will open, as shown in Figure 30.10. If you chose the correct button, you should not need to change any of the settings. Simply click the OK button.

    Figure 30.10. PowerPoint automatically sets the hyperlink for you when you use the correct action button.

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If you have many slides that need the same navigation buttons, you can create all buttons on the first slide, select them all, and then paste them on each slide. For example, suppose you have 50 slides and want each slide to have a Back, Forward, Beginning, and End button. Instead of creating each button one at a time, create all four buttons on slide one. Then select them all (using the lasso method or Shift+Click) and click the Copy button (or select Edit, Copy from the menu). Go to each slide and click the Paste button (or select Edit, Paste from the menu). You will probably want to delete the Back and Beginning buttons from the first slide and the Forward and End buttons from the last slide.




Sams Teach Yourself Office Productivity All in One
Sams Teach Yourself Office Productivity All in One (Sams Teach Yourself All in One)
ISBN: 0672325349
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 474
Authors: Greg Perry

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