Action buttons, which you saw in Figure 21.1, enable your audience members to move from slide to slide in the presentation with a minimum of fuss. PowerPoint provides many preset action buttons that already have hyperlinks assigned to them, so all you have to do is place them on your slides.
The action buttons that come with PowerPoint are shown in Table 21.2, along with their preset hyperlinks. As you can see, some of them are all ready to go; others require you to specify to where they jump. Most of the buttons have a default action assigned to them, but you can change any of these as needed.
Button | Name | Hyperlinks to |
---|---|---|
| Back or Previous | Previous slide in the presentation (not necessarily the last slide viewed; compare to Return). |
| Forward or Next | Next slide in the presentation. |
| Beginning | First slide in the presentation. |
| End | Last slide in the presentation. |
| Home | First slide in the presentation. (Home is where you get started and it's a picture of a house, get it?) |
| Information | Nothing, by default, but you can point it to a slide or document containing information. |
| Return | Last slide viewed, regardless of normal order. This is useful to place on a hidden slide that the audience will jump to with another link (such as Help), to help them return to the main presentation when they are finished. |
| Movie | Nothing, by default, but you can set it to play a movie that you specify. |
| Document | Nothing, by default, but you can set it to open a file that you specify. |
| Sound | Plays a sound that you specify. If you don't choose a sound, it plays the first sound on PowerPoint's list of standard sounds (Applause). |
| Help | Nothing, by default, but you can point it toward a slide containing help or a Help file from an application (usually has a. hlp extension but could also have a.chm or .html extension). |
| None | Nothing, by default. You can add text or fills to the button to create custom buttons. |
EXPERT TIP | At first glance, there seems little reason to use action buttons that simply move the slide show forward and backward. After all, isn't it just as easy to use the keyboard's Page Up and Page Down keys, or to click the left mouse button to advance to the next slide? Well, yes, but if you use Kiosk mode, described in the later in the chapter, you cannot move from slide to slide using any of the conventional keyboard or mouse methods. The only thing the mouse can do is click on action buttons and hyperlinks. |
To place an action button, follow these steps:
If you want to place the button on the Slide Master, display it (on the View tab, click Slide Master). If you want to place the button on all layouts, click the top slide (the slide master itself). If you want only a certain layout to receive the buttons, click it.
EXPERT TIP | Some action buttons are best placed on the Slide Master, such as Next and Previous; others, such as Return, are special-use buttons that are best placed on individual slides such as hidden slides. |
On the Insert or Home tab, click Shapes. A palette of shapes appears; at the bottom of the palette are the action buttons. See Figure 21.10.
Figure 21.10: Action buttons are shapes, inserted from the Shapes palette.
Click the button that you want to place. Your mouse pointer turns into a crosshair.
To create a button of a specific size, drag on the slide (or Slide Master) where you want it to go. Or, to create a button of a default size, simply click once where you want to place it. You can resize the button at any time later, the same as you can any object.
EXPERT TIP | If you want to place several buttons, and you want them all to be the same size, place them at the default size to begin with. Then select them all, and resize them as a group. That way they will all be exactly the same size. |
The Action Settings dialog box appears. Make sure the Mouse Click tab is on top. See Figure 21.11.
Figure 21.11: Specify what should happen when you click the action button.
Confirm or change the hyperlink set up there:
If the action button should take the reader to a specific location, make sure the correct slide appears in the Hyperlink To box. Refer to Table 21.2 to see the default setting for each action button. Table 21.3 lists the choices you can make and what they do.
Drop-Down Menu Choice | Result |
---|---|
Previous Slide Next Slide First Slide Last Slide Last Slide Viewed | These choices do just what their names say. These are the default actions assigned to certain buttons you learned about in Table 21.2. |
End Show | Sets the button to stop the show when clicked. |
Custom Show … | Opens a Link to Custom Show dialog box, where you can choose a custom show to jump to when the button is clicked. |
Slide … | Opens a Hyperlink to Slide dialog box, where you can choose any slide in the current presentation to jump to when the button is clicked. |
URL … | Opens a Hyperlink to URL dialog box, where you can enter a Web address to jump to when the button is clicked. |
Other PowerPoint Presentation … | Opens a Hyperlink to Other PowerPoint Presentation dialog box, where you can choose another PowerPoint presentation to display when the button is clicked. |
Other File … | Opens a Hyperlink to Other File dialog box, where you can choose any file to open when the button is clicked. If the file requires a certain application, that application will open when needed. (To run another application without opening a specific file in it, use the Run Program option in the Action Settings dialog box instead of Hyperlink To.) |
If the action button should run a program, choose Run program and enter the program's name and path, or click Browse to locate it. For example, you could open the Calculator application from an action button. The executable file that runs it is calc.exe.
If the action button should play a sound, make sure the Play Sound check box is marked, and choose the correct sound from the Play Sound drop-down list (or pick a different sound file by choosing Other Sound).
Click OK. The button has been assigned the action you specified.
Add more action buttons as desired by repeating these steps.
If you are working in Slide Master view, exit it by clicking the Close Master View button.
Test your action buttons in Slide Show view to make sure they jump where you want them to.
To edit a button's action, right-click it and choose Hyperlink to reopen this dialog box at any time.
The blank action button you saw in Table 21.2 can be very useful. You can place several of them on a slide and type text into them, creating your own set of buttons. To type text into a blank button, follow these steps:
Place a blank action button on the slide (from the Shapes gallery).
Right-click the action button and choose Edit Text. An insertion point appears in it. (You can also select the button and simply start typing.)
Type your text, and then click away from the button when you are finished. If you need to edit the text later, simply click the text to move the insertion point back into it, just as you do with any text box.
You can format action buttons just like other shapes, as you learned to do in Chapter 10. You can apply borders, fills and effects to them, and apply Shape Style presets. You can also use WordArt styles or individual text formatting controls to format the text on them.
To make action buttons of different shapes, you can use the Change Shape button, as in the following steps:
Select the action button(s) to change.
On the Drawing Tools Format tab, click Edit Shape Change Shape.
Click a different shape. See Figure 21.12.
Figure 21.12: Change the shape of an action button as you would any other shape.
Figure 21.13 shows some examples of custom buttons you can create with your own text and some shape formatting.
Figure 21.13: You can create any of these sets of action buttons by typing and formatting text on blank buttons.
You can create an action button out of any object on your slide: a drawn shape, a piece of clip art, a photograph, a text box - anything. To do so, just from the Insert tab click Action. Then, set the On Click action to Hyperlink To, Run Program, or Play Sound, just as you did for the action buttons in the preceding sections.
Make sure you clearly label the object that you are using as an action button so that the users will know what they are getting when they click it. You can add text to the object directly (for example, with an AutoShape), or you can add a text box next to the button that explains its function. If you want to use a ScreenTip to label the item, use a hyperlink rather than an action setting.