Menu Select Screen for Course

Feb 23, 2011

Hi,

I just finished a few courses with non-linear navigations. In one, everything is linked from a menu page. So after each section, you'd be directed back to the menu to pick another path. Instead of making the menu a slide in the deck, would it be possible to have the menu be in the tabs? I've seen Engage in the tabs, so is there any way to have an Engage link to slides in the presentation? Another way?

9 Replies
Jeff ("JP") Redman

This works pretty well for us.

This particular project was ALL about navigation. The finished presentation had over 200 highly detailed, highly legalistic slides.

The "tab" navigation is in the Master Slides. When I need a new Section 1 Body page I just add it using the Add Slide dialog.

On the "section header" pages I put the titles of each slide in the section with a hyperlink to that page.

The button on the lower right corner of each "Section Body" page takes you back to the Section Index page. That link is also on the Master Slide.

The Master slides are somewhat "messy", but the messes are about getting things to look right. Navigation is simple and straight forward.

Jo Connelly

Hi JP, I also created a tabbed template in PPTx but am having problems getting the hyperlinks to work correctly. (I just found your tabbed template and downloaded it.) In my template, the first click of a tab brings me to the correct destination slide but all subsequent clicks of tabs move me sequentially through the template not to destination slides of a specific tabs. I want the user to be able to click any tab from any place within the course and be brought to the first page of the selected section/tab. Any advice? I noticed the same issue in your template. Am I asking too much of PPTx or can this be done?  Thanks ! - Joanne

Jeff ("JP") Redman

Well.... Hmmm?

It is possible, Jo, that there are some development artifacts left behind in the template I sent out. When putting it together I made a lot of errors and false starts, but I made these templates by stripping the content out of the finish project, so I am reasonably confident that it works as intended and believe Justin's suggestion will solve your problem, BUT if it doesn't and you need me to look at it for you, please feel free to ask.

Jo Connelly

Thanks for your help Jeff and Justin. I read the article. I finally got my hyperlinks in PowerPoint to work (I hyperlinked the tab graphics instead of the empty autoshapes on top of the tabs and that seemed to do the trick). But after I published the PowerPoint, the links did not work in Presenter (I published for CD since I am not able to publish it in my client's environment yet.) I'm using Articulate 09 with PPTx 2007 under Parallels Desktop on a Mac Book Pro. I designed the tab menu structure after looking at many of Tom Kuhlman's posts/screenr tutorials where he recommends and demonstrates setting up menu structures in PowerPoint. I posted my question on his bog but have not heard back. Can you think of anything else I should try before I give up? I'm under a really tight deadline. Thanks.

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