how do I specify a mouse cursor on a button?

Hi Samantha!

Did you use hotspots with these? If so, right click on the hotspot and you'll see an option to "show hand cursor" which you can disable/enable based on your preference. Check out the Showing or Hiding a Hand Cursor When Hovering Over Hotspots section of this tutorial for reference. Hope that helps! 

I just turned them into hotspots

Kinda weird that you can't set the properties of a button though.

I found that if you add states to an image to use for a button, you get the hand cursor. If you make a shape button, you get the mouse pointer. Even if you put an image into a shape, you still get the pointer. Not sure why there's a difference.

Hi there Jacqui!

I'm not sure if you've tried this yet, but you can easy format a shape into a button by following these steps:

• Insert the shape onto your slide.
• Add a button onto your slide.
• Which the button selected, click the Format Painter in the Home tab, then click the shape.
• Delete the button. Now the shape now has the same states as the button, and the hand cursor appears when the mouse hovers over the shape.

Here's a quick video tutorial on how to do that!

Is it possible to hide the mouse cursor if I've used a shape with an attached trigger instead of a hotspot?  I wanted to hide the button after it's been clicked, and I don't think I can hide a hotspot, so I used transparent shapes.  But I want the exercise to be difficult, and showing the hand cursor gives away the place the user should click.

Create a big transparent shape. It should cover all the appropriate part of the slide. It should go under all the spots where a learner can click. Give it a trigger that does nothing, like change state to normal when user clicks. That way the cursor is always over a click spot and is always a hand.