Hyperlinks In PowerPoint

May 30, 2012

My presentation eventually arrives at slide 33 and then references content on slide 18, so I insert a PowerPoint hyperlink “within this document.”

My presentation has multiple instances (each a different slide) of pointing backwards to slide 18 content.

Does anyone know of any way to quickly, easily & conveniently allow the student to return to the slide from which the hyperlink was initiated ? (In this example, once arrived at slide 18 from slide 33 and now return to slide 33 after review the slide 18 content)

Thanks … Bill

11 Replies
Bill Finnerty

As follow-on, I have started PowerPoint & created a 3 slide pptx. Slide 1 is the target of the hyperlink & both slides 2 & 3 have a hyperlink to slide 1.

If I run the pptx as a PowerPoint slide show, slide 2 hyperlink positions to slide 1 and then if I click, while positioned to slide 1, PowerPoint returns me to the source of the hyperlink (i.e. slide 2).

Same behavior holds true for starting hyperlink at slide 3 – it positions to slide 1 and click returns to slide 3.

The above described behavior is as I expected.

However, if I use Presenter to preview all 3 slides, the hyperlink positions to the correct destination but does NOT return to the hyperlink start point when click.

Am I doing something wrong here or are my expectation out of line with reality ?

Is there an articulate switch setting to achieve the desired behavior ?

Peter Anderson

Hey Bill!

For your second, 3-slide scenario, you'll need to publish the course for the hyperlinks to work in Presenter. Hyperlinks in Presenter are not supported in preview. The same holds true for your original 33-slide course. So if you apply the same principles to your 33-slide course as you have to your 3-slide course, you should have the proper hyperlinking scenario once you publish. Let us know how it goes...

Rebecca Fleisch Cordeiro

Hi Peter and Bill,

Peter, I was playing with this before you'd answered, so now I have a question, since the published version (I created 4 slides) isn't working for me. Here's what I did in PPT

  1. Created 4 slides
  2. Linked slides 1, 2, 3 back to slide 1 (using an action button)
  3. Placed a custom action button on slide 1 to always return to "last slide viewed."

In PowerPoint, all works as anticipated.

When I publish for Presenter, the action buttons on slides 1, 2, 3 work, but the button on slide 1 is "dead." Should this work? TIA

Bill Finnerty

As best I can determine, Presenter does NOT support hyper linking to a destination slide then returning to the slide from whence the hyperlink was initiated. For example, hyperlink from slide 3 to slide 1 then returning to slide 3 without defining a hyperlink from slide 1 to slide 3.

Significantly, my presentation hyperlinks  to slide 1 from multiple slides throughout the presentation. In the raw PowerPoint slide show, when user hyperlinks to slide 1 from anywhere in the presentation, then right clicks on slide 1 and selects menu item “Last Viewed” to return from whence the hyperlink was initiated.

I can find NO WAY TO ACCOMPLISH THIS Presenter.

Additionally, the hyper linking seems to work just find in preview mode – I just cannot return to the hyperlink-initiating slide.

Peter Anderson

Hi Bill,

Sorry if I misunderstood your original question or was unclear, but you would have to actually hyperlink back to the original slide they came from- there's no easy one-click option for that. And seeing as how you are linking to one slide from many, I'm not sure you'd be able to pull it off. I think a "return to previous slide" option would make a great feature request though, for future builds. I seem to remember a third-party widget that allowed this but I haven't had any luck searching for it. Maybe someone else can dig it up for you...

Bill Finnerty

Peter,

Thanks for your patient assistance and

Rebecca,

Under Articulate Presenter ’09 Product Support, I search for “PowerPoint hyperlink support” and find a bulleted list of hyperlink options that are supported by Presented ’09 – the middle one is “Previous Slide”.

Further down in this article in section entitled “Hyperlink to a place in this document” it is explicitly stated “Previous slide will not work in Presenter”

I guess one of these is a documentation typo &, based on how the software seems to work, my guess is the typo is former not the later??!!

Perhaps, using some slide title (without commas) or a bookmark will allow me to accomplish the cross referencing I’m trying for in this presentation.

Even though I doubt it, hope springs eternal!!

Should I be thinking in terms of using Engage or Storyline or … to accomplish this goal ??

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