links not working correctly

Mar 10, 2011

I have two slides that have links going to URLs that are going to the wrong place. This happens when published, not in preview mode. On both pages there are two links on each page. My sentence looks something like this: blah blah link and link blah. The second link works fine in the sentence. The first link is linking to the same place as the second link. When I look at my PowerPoint, the links look good. Any idea what's going on?

30 Replies
Tammy Smith

I had this problem to begin with.  What you want to do is for the second link, have it go to the last slide in your presentation.  Then, in that last slide, have it link to where you want it to go.  When I tried to link a second hyperlink to like a 3rd slide that was supposed to take it to a different area, it would always go to the same place the first link went to.  For some reason, in the 2nd hyperlink, you have to pick 'Go to Last Slide' for it to work.  I'm still wondering if there's actionscript for an animated button made in Flash to go to Last Slide instead of a specific slide number.

Brian Batt

Hi Terri,

I would suggest you submit a case by following the steps below.

Please create an Articulate Presenter package, then upload the zip file to our server. You can review how to do this here: 

Send to Articulate Presenter Package – Articulate Presenter ’09 Help

Upload the resulting zip file from your computer to our server using this upload form: 

Articulate Support - Upload Your Files for Review 

Please be sure to include a description of your issue, your version of PowerPoint, version of Windows and version of Presenter '09 which you can find in Help and Support -> About Articulate Presenter. Please also include the URL for this thread so we can follow up with you in the forums.

Elizabeth Israel

It's just about a year later and I am having this issue as well.  It's frustrating that this continues to be an issue with Articulate.  I am hopeful that it is a fix or feature in Storyline.  I have had many people (including IT) trying to connect to them and they work are set up appropriately but when the presentation publishes it blows up.

Phillip Nissley

I too will add, yet ANOTHER  year after Jo's  post (two years after the OP) and this issue is still raising its ugly head.

I've got three lines of text with a Hotspot on top of each:

  • First two link to internal web sites (http://path/site/page) within a corp. intranet
  • Last link is set to email a support team.

I tried testing the html file output locally, as well as from the media server where this will be hosted and the links just do not work. The cursor changes to the "finger" cursor from an arrow cursor, but no action occurs.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Phillip and welcome to Heroes!

It sounds like you're describing an issue within Storyline, whereas this thread deals with Presenter - so it's a bit different. 

In regards to testing the links, you'll want to test within the intended publish environment instead of testing locally as that could cause you to encounter local and browser security restrictions. The email trigger can also run into restrictions from the email client as described here, and therefore it may not fire as expected. 

In regards to the link for something within your intranet - have you checked to confirm that links to other URLs work (something as simple as www.google.com)? If so, could the company intranet be blocking access to links when hosted on the server? In the article linked above there are a few other servers options you may want to test as well to help us narrow down where this issue is occurring. 

Cindy Jeromin

I'm experiencing the same problem. I tried your Google solution above and no luck. Google doesn't even work! I'm trying to get things to work within a SharePoint 2013 environment. I've saved to SharePoint and can launch and run the course no problem. At the end, the course has a link to another SharePoint page where the student can post their grade after they are done. The link to that second SP page won't work when published. It will work when I test in the published environment of Articulate but as soon as I save it to SharePoint, the links will not work. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Cindy,

Sorry I missed this last week - but you mentioned in worked within the publish environment of Articulate, do you mean testing it locally? I'm not familiar enough with Sharepoint, but have you checked to see if it's blocking external links or urls some how? You may want to try it from another web server to see how it behaves and there are a few mentioned in this article that you could use.

Cindy Jeromin

Hi Ashley! No worries. I have saved all the Storyline files to SharePoint 2013 and the course launches and works perfectly until I get to the end where I want the student to click a link to jump to the page where they post their score. The link is to another SharePoint page so everything is web based but within our intranet environment. I've asked our IT folks to look at SharePoint and they see no issue. When I check the link in Storyline, it shows the correct link and works when I'm testing on my local machine. The problem seems to be that the link in Storyline won't work in the SharePoint environment. Really frustrating since we are small and don't have access to an LMS. If anyone else has any suggestions on how to make this work, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

Cindy Jeromin

Yes and I haven't had any issue at all. I tried the test mentioned above and even a Google link in Storyline won't open into Google. I have tons of links around our SharePoint "dashboard" that link to both internal and external sites and other SharePoint pages - even into our document management system - with no problem at all. Only the link within a Storyline product won't connect.

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