Adding Resource File Links to Your Articulate Presenter ’13 Course

Sometimes it’s really helpful to give learners access to additional resource material for your course—things like reference materials, job aids, websites, printable files, and more. In Articulate Presenter ’13, you can set up learners to help themselves to these materials at any point in the course through the Resources tab on the player. However, there may be times when you want to lead learners to these items at a particular point in your course, so you’re presenting them in the right context. In that case, you can easily link your resource documents to specific slides in your presentation. Here’s how:

When you publish your Presenter ’13 content, it will save all of your resource file attachments in the presentation_content/external_files directory of your published output folder with this structure:

presentation_content/external_files/filename

(Replace filename with the name of your file, including the appropriate file extension, i.e., MyFile.pdf)

Because all the files are in one place, it’s really easy to link to them with these few steps:

Linking to File Attachments in Presenter ’13

1. If you haven't already done so, add the file(s) to the Resources tab in your player.

2. In PowerPoint, navigate to the slide where you want to link to the file attachment, and select the text or object that you want to be hyper-linked.

3. Then do any of the following:

•  
  • Go to the Insert tab, and click the Hyperlink button.
  • Press CTRL + K
  • Right-click and choose Hyperlink ...

4. The Insert Hyperlink box opens.
 

5. In the Address field, type the following text (but replace MyFile.pdf with the name of your file, including the appropriate file extension): 

presentation_content/external_files/MyFile.pdf

6. Click OK.

NOTE: If you view a published Studio ’13 presentation on your local hard drive or send it to someone else to view on their local hard drive, you'll encounter security restrictions from the computer, web browser, Flash Player, and network that’ll cause various features of your content, including this one, to fail. Everything should work fine when viewed from a web server or LMS. 

To see these steps in action, take a look at my screencast here:

If you want to try this yourself but don’t have Studio ’13, no problem. Simply sign up for a fully functional, free 30-day trial and give it a whirl. When you’re done, don’t forget to share your work or post your questions and comments in the forums. 

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