hyperlink not working

Also, there may be a character limitation on the link.  If its more than 125 characters or so it may error out.

This question is for Brian Batt regarding the following post:

Hyperlinks you include in PowerPoint will be respected in your published output.  However, not all hyperlink options are supported in Presenter.  For more details, please see: 

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=907 

Brian--are you saying that I cannot hyperlink to a hidden slide?  I have created a scenario based question in my presentation and they have to choose  their response via a hyperlink on the slide.  Depending on which hyperlink they choose, they are taken to the corresponding response on another slide.  Therefore, I have hidden the response slides because there are several and the learner may not necessarily have to go to each one of them depending on which response they choose--and I don't want them to see the response slides in the Outline View. 

Is there any other way around this?

Hi Brenda,

You should have no problem linking to a hidden slide, in fact, I would imagine that is fairly common practice.

The important thing is that you link to the slide directly (you cannot choose "Last slide viewed" for example)

There are three things that might be affecting your hyperlinks, in the following order:

1) Hyperlinks WILL NOT WORK in preview. They will work fine once you publish, but not until then.

2) Hyperlinks in an project published for LMS, will often work strangely until it is actually placed on an LMS. (Even though you can technically view the files from the "player.html" file, it will sometimes be buggy until it is actually viewed from an LMS)

3) Sometimes hyperlinks that are 100% transparent will publish wonky or not at all. It is a best practice to make a hyperlink 99% transparent, which will still look the same, but is less likely to be ignored when published.

Hope that helps.

If none of those three are the problem, try submitting a case to technical support.

- Kayla

I have a slide with map of the Midwest, with a 99% transparent shape over each state - each shape has a hyperlink to another slide.  The hyperlinks work in PowerPoint, but not in previews or when it is published.  I think I have tried most of the suggestions above, but I still can't get them to work.  I have other hyperlinks on the slide that do work - these also link to other slides in the presentation.  Any ideas?

Hi Amanda and welcome to Heroes!

Check out this link to see if you can find a resolution. For example, under "Viewing a presentation that contains hyperlinks", you'll see that projects should always be tested in the same environment as they are published. So if you're testing locally, publish for CD and launch via Launch_Presentation.exe

Let me know if the issue persists...

I had that problem too for a while. One thing is that if you hav custom animations on them - they have to be on click. Another is that odd things happen if there are any groups ..that is to say..if you have a transparent link box over a set of grouped objects sometimes it won't work.

Thanks for your suggestions.  I removed all animations on the slide, just to be sure, and nothing is grouped, and I'm pretty sure everything else is copasetic, but the links still aren't working.  This is my first time working with hyperlinks (and Articulate for that matter) so I might be missing something rudimentary - I will take any more suggestions that you may have!

Well, there is one more thing.  I had that problem too...and it turned out the project file was corrupted. I had to start a fresh file nd rebuild everything - insert graphics, etc.  Only this time, i was careful to add a slide, add the graphics then go back and lay the hyperlink boxes on them.

Okay, I'm a dummy.  Denise, you were right about the grouping - I checked again and found that some items were grouped together, so I ungrouped them and now it works beautifully.  Thanks for your help!

THATS GREAT!  Congratulations! And no, your not a dummy...I went through the same gyrations and got help from the great people on this forum!!!

Thanks for all your help! It seems the problem was in the hyperlink address :)

Hi -  does anyone have any good tips on how to work around the url character limitation within Engage activities?  I am working with a designer that is linking out to documents on a SharePoint site with many  folder levels - unfortunately.  We cannot alter where the content is stored at this point but need to see if there is a way to still link to the content.  Ideas?

use tiny.url  or similar

Hi Brian

When you say (in your Knowledge Base article "PowerPoint hyperlink support" and here and there on the support forums in response to frustrated users):

"...Hyperlinks you include in PowerPoint will be respected in your published output. However, not all hyperlink options are supported in Presenter. ...[Followed by a list of PowerPoint hyperlink options that are supported by Presenter ’09 and a list of PowerPoint hyperlink options that are not (from which Last Slide Viewed seems to be miissing]..."

...would it not be more accurate and unambiguous to say: "...Hyperlinks you include in PowerPoint will NOT be respected in your published output, as they are only partially supported in in Presenter....[& cet.]."

Or am I misunderstanding something?

Thanks, Ben

Hi Ben,

Partially supporting hyperlinks and not supporting hyperlinks with exceptions invoke different meanings and assumptions.  With that being said, I think that the article is correct because the hyperlinks are there, the Presenter output just doesn't know what to do with them.

If you still feel it should be worded differently, please feel free to submit the request by using the "feedback" section at the bottom of the article:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=907

Once you rate the article & submit the feedback, an email will be sent to the individual that handles the technical documentation.

Hi Brian

Thanks for the reply. Having raised my concern here, I won't submit a request for a rewording, as you have argued your case rationally. (I don't entirely agree with you, though, when you say "...I think that the article is correct because the hyperlinks are there, the Presenter output just doesn't know what to do with them...": if Presenter doesn't know what to do with them, they're as good as unusable.) But I do understand that the business decision: which is more important, to put a positive spin on a shortcoming and risk annoying the odd user or to be frank but risk drawing attention to a relatively minor shortcoming. In any case I have every confidence that your backroom lads and lasses are hard at work on support for all possible hyperlinks in a future release.

Thanks

Ben

Hey Ben. If there is something you want to see in a future version of Presenter, feel free to submit a feature request. I removed the text from the article that apparently confused you about what we do and don't support. If you are having an issue with a hyperlink that is supported, feel free to submit a case.

Thanks for the reply, Justin, and your action. What you have done has removed the ambiguity.

Hey Everyone,

I'm having a hyperlink problem  --

I read this support page and I'm wondering if a hyperlink on a shape created in PowerPoint is supported by Articulate.  I saved this shape as a JPEG.  I understand hyperlinks are not supported in Presenter if they are in tables and SmartArt graphics, but shapes are a separate menu option in PP, so I'm unclear on this. 

To resolve the problem, I created a transparent shape over it as suggested by a user on page 1 of this thread, and tested that in the hosting environment, an LMS and the hyperlink is still not working.  My shape with the hyperlink is on two slides, one slide has an on-lick animation, Fade, and the other slide one with no animation and the hyperlink didn't work even after implementing the transparent shape over the shape.  When I click on the shape in the LMS, I get a "The webpage cannot be found" message in IE.

This is the address in IE: http://tln.learnflex.net/CourseDepot/617/..AttachmentsExample-Moisture-Density-Proctor-Test-Worksheet.pdf

The hyperlink is to a PDF in a folder called Attachments; this folder is outside a folder called "Development" where I keep my PP, Articulate, Quizmaker, and Engage files.  I'll try linking to the PDF with the PDF in the Development folder.  Other than this I can't think of any other resolution.  Does anyone have any ideas and insight that would help me?

Thanks!

Rachel

I re-read the section on the help page called Hyperlinking to a file and realized I didn't try typing in the name of the PDF, so I am trying that now, also moved the PDF into the same folder where my PP, Articulate, and Quizmaker files are located.  Will post the result in a few minutes.

It didn't work.  I got a different error message: 404 - File or directory not found.

Does anyone have any advice?

Hi Rachel, 

Forgive me if I missed you saying so, but have you tried publishing the course and uploading it to a server yet, or are you trying to test it locally? 

Thanks, Rachel. I just responded to your direct message.