Powerpoint Links Stop working in Presenter 360

Nov 29, 2016

I spent hundreds of hours and many tens of thousands of dollars in labor in 2013 and 2014 to built a robust "wizard" to guide my clients through a very complicate process involving many hundreds of outcomes dependent on a few questions up front.  The up-front question were simple hyperlinks that would take a client to another place in the powerpoint presenter package and then ask another question and using another link would drill down further.  At the end of 6 questions (hyperlinks) they would arrive at a guide (one of ~60) that would tell them how to ship a given product using the HazMat regulations.

Despite all the time and money invested it still turned out to be a good product (220+ slides) that worked using presenter 13.  So I was dumbstruck just now when I discovered after working for days to update this presentation with new data in Presenter 360... that my jumps to custom shows don't work.  The links don't work in powerpoint or in preview or in html or on the LMS.

I discovered a few minutes ago that Articulate has decided NOT to support this linking behavior in Presenter 360???  Now not only is my file ruined (from the perspective of spending the last 2 days updating it with new data in Presenter 360, but in addition to that I have to figure out how I can revert this file back to the old version of Presenter which I'll have to install on another computer just so I can work on this file in the future.  So here's my questions in a nutshell:

(1) is there anything stopping me from running Presenter 13 on one computer just for the purpose of working on this one file with the same license key as I'd be using to upgrade to Articulate 360 (I'm using a trial at the moment).

(2) Why did you decide not to support linking in powerpoint as you have in the past?  This is a huge deal for me, at least.  I want to be able to jump and branch out to other slides in the file not just the next, previous, first, last ones that Presenter 360 now supports.  I spent weeks creating these custom shows 2 years ago and they're toast now.  When will this be fixed? Will it?

I really wanted to go with presenter 360 because Presenter 13 keeps blowing up when I publish files (I have a support request in on this), this has happened for years and it'd be good to get to a stable program as Presenter 360 seems to be.  It just doesn't work the way I need it to.

The big deal at the conference in Las Vegas last week where Articulate made a big push for Articulate 360... it was all about "adaptive" e-learning.  That's what I'm doing in my rudimentary way using links to custom shows within powerpoint and it now seems that even this basic functionality is torpedoed.

Finally can you give me a utility that will take this new 360 presenter file and convert it BACK into the old format so I can use it?

2 Replies
Crystal Horn

Hey there, Jim.  That's a lot of time and money spent creating content, so I can certainly understand your frustration.  You're right that hyperlinking to custom shows in PowerPoint is not supported in Presenter 360, and it is also not supported in Presenter '13.  It sounds like in your Presenter '13 versions, however, you had a setup that was working.  Are you able to share your Presenter '13 package with us for comparison when upgrading to Presenter 360?

To answer your questions:  Yes, you can certainly continue to run your Presenter '13 (and other Studio '13 products), but you'll have to run it on another computer since only one instance of Studio can be installed on a desktop.  You'll own your Studio '13 license forever, so no need to worry about it expiring, even if you use your loyalty discount to upgrade to Studio 360.

I don't have an answer about the change in support for links in PowerPoint content, but I will see if our development team can provide us with some insight.  The support for links should be the same from Presenter '13 to Presenter 360, but since you're experiencing a loss from one version to the next, again, I'd love to be able to have a look at your content to try and reproduce, and share with them.

I know you've been working with our support team, as well; regarding your publishing issue, I see your case with Rowie ( # 956757), and you are still able to respond to him if necessary.  It looks like he provided some steps for you to fix the erratic behavior that you're experiencing, so let us know if you're still stuck in the mud!

The files that you create and edit in the Articulate 360 products are not backwards compatible with previous versions.  While any changes you made in 360 cannot be opened or edited in Studio '13, you should still have access to the Studio '13 backup file that was created when you upgraded your existing project in Studio 360.

One thing that I wanted to mention, however, though I'm not sure how much work it would save you.  With Articulate 360, you get all of our authoring tools available, including Storyline 360.  Would it make sense for you to import any of your existing Presenter '13 work into Storyline 360 and leverage Storyline's branching abilities?  Storyline 360 will give you infinite opportunities for branching navigation since it is not restricted to the linear slide design of PowerPoint.  Again, it would take reworking, but I wanted to throw that out there as a possible navigational workaround for your course!

Jim Powell

I just created a new ticket and case on this -- I figured I'd let this sit for a year or two and maybe by now articulate has a solution.  The linking works just fine in Presenter 360 but NOT when I publish it -- when I preview it in "slideshow" it's flawless. but as soon as I publish it it doesn't work -- only the first link works.  I've been using Presenter 13 on a separate computer for 3 years since this last post -- but windows keeps updating despite my attempts to stop it and how it's crippled in presenter 13 so I've upgrade to 360 presenter -- again will work in preview, or "slide show" but not when output to LMS and html5.

previous case was case was with Rowie ( # 956757) but never got to a solution.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.