Let's first take a look at how you can organize and outline your
presentation in a circular way. Imagine that you are creating a
presentation as your electronic resume and curriculum vitae.
You will need an introductory slide to introduce yourself, your title,
and a list of sections that cover your profile (academic studies,
professional experiences, references etc). This will be a slide that will
present the table of contents with all the navigation buttons to move
toward the other slides.
In the case of this electronic resume, you may have a navigation bar
(vertical or horizontal) where you have all the links to the different
sections of your presentation. In this case: Education, Professional
Experiences, Languages, Personal Experiences, Community Service, Contacts
etc.
A good, little trick to apply right at the start of this process is to
create a navigation bar for all the slides in the presentation by working
in the Slide Master. If you insert the navigation bar in the Slide Master,
and you link all the buttons to the single sections in your presentation
while working on the Slide Master, you will end having all the slides of
your presentation with the same exact navigation bar. This is done once,
but works on all the slides. This will provide you (or those who may run
the show) to move freely within the presentation and to jump to any
desired slide at any time.
What might be the convenience of having this type of navigation bar
present on all our slides?
Well, imagine if someone in the audience asks you about a topic you
have already discussed or have yet to discuss. You have the ability to
jump to that specific slide by using the navigation button that will link
you to that slide. Above all, once you are on that desired slide, you can
return to the previous slide (or any other slide) thanks to the presence
of the same helpful navigation bar.
With this type of presentation, you can easily run the show with a
cordless mouse (which are nowadays quite economical) and have all the
freedom you can dream of since you can direct the whole show just with
your cordless mouse.
Of course you may want to be well prepared in knowing what and which of
your slides contain, but this can be easily accomplished by printing ahead
of presentation time a thumbnail view of all your slides. To do this you
can have a look at my previous article about printing in MasterView Issue #5, art. 3.
Let me show you know how you can create this navigation bar on all the
slides.
Move first into the Slide Master ("View" >>
"Master" >> "Slide Master") to create a
navigation bar that will be displayed on all the slides in your
presentation.
Then, to visually create the navigation buttons needed, you can either
use the Action buttons that PowerPoint provides you with, or you can
create your own icons.
In the first case, have a look at the Drawing Toolbar, just above the
status bar.
Click on "Autoshapes" >> "Action buttons" and
find the one you are looking for. You can choose among: "Home",
"Information", "Help", "Previous" or
"Next", "Beginning" or "End",
"Custom" or even some multimedia ones (sounds, video and so on).
1) Use the Autoshapes icons to create your navigation buttons which
will link to specific slides in the presentation. Once you have inserted
the buttons, you will be able to format them as normal drawing objects
(modifying the color, the size, the shape, the border and so on).
To add the right text on top of them, you can either type in directly
after the object has been selected or add a text box on it.
2) If you want to nurture the artist in you and you want to draw your
own icons for the buttons, you can use any other AutoShape and also take
advantage of the 3-D effects to obtain a navigation button that you like.
3) In case you want something different, you can find thousands of
great looking buttons on the Web that you can easily copy by
right-clicking on them and choosing "Copy". You could then paste
them into your slides (note that this feature may not work with all the
browsers but for sure it works with Internet Explorer). You can use a good
search engine such as Google (www.google.com)
and use as keywords just "navigation buttons".
The first one on the results' list will be www.freenavigationbuttons.com
and others will follow. It is just a matter of choosing!
To link your buttons, that is, to set an action to them, consider the
following options:
In PowerPoint 97, if you use the Action buttons under Autoshapes (see
point 1) you will be first prompted to save your presentation (and in that
case, I suggest you to do so). Then, the box for the "Action
Settings" will automatically pop up.
In PowerPoint 2000, you will not be prompted to save your file, but the
"Action Settings" box will pop up as well.
In case you decide to either draw your buttons (see solution 2) or to
copy them from other ready-made buttons on the Web (see solution 3), you
will have to manually insert an hyperlink or set an action.
A - To insert a hyperlink:
1) Select the object first
2) Press either Ctrl + K (short cut) or click on "Insert"
>> "Hyperlink" (in PowerPoint 2000 you will find the
"Hyperlink" option also on your right-clicking on the object).
3) Then, in PowerPoint 2000, select where your icon should redirect you
when clicked:
- Existing files or Web pages
- A different slide in the current document
- A new document that you haven't created yet (and you can do it right at
that time)
- An e-mail address
4) Press "OK" and the hyperlink will be activated.
While the "Hyperlink" feature of PowerPoint 97 provides you
less features, you can: link to a file or a URL (using the
"Browse" button to locate it) or link to an existing slide
within your presentation.
You always have the option to check the box that says: "Use relative
path for hyperlink", so that you will create a link to that slide,
which could be eventually moved, and not to the specific location of that
file (in this case, if you move the file the link will be broken).
Relative in fact means: relative to the slide title, not to the slide
progressive number that can change if you move your slides.
Later on, we will take a look at the differences, the pros and cons of
applying a hyperlink instead of an action.
B - To set an action:
1) Select the object first
2) Right-click on it and choose "Action settings..." or click
on "Slide Show" in the Menu Bar and choose "Action
Settings..."
3) From the drop-down list "Hyperlink to:" you can decide
what action to assign to your object.
4) Click "OK" and it is done.
**Take note that in both cases you can only check your hyperlink or action
settings by switching to "Slide Show View" mode (full screen).
In all other view modes the mouse will not turn into a hand (like on any
Web page).
Pros and Cons of each method:
Hyperlink (I am referring to the PowerPoint 2000 version):
* It is easier if you want to hyperlink to a Web page. It allows you
use all the bookmarks you have in the Favorites' folder and all the
recently browsed Web pages.
* It is easier to hyperlinking an existing file, since you can select
it among a list of recently opened files.
* Finally, this option is great when you want to link an object to an
e-mail address: You can select the address from a list of recently used
ones. You are able to type the e-mail address in the space provided. In
addition, you can insert the subject that will appear automatically in the
e-mail message that will be sent.
This feature may be particularly very useful and quite unique in a
presentation you deliver on an Intranet, over the Internet, or send it to
some colleagues or directly to your audience (kind of a presentation
broadcast, see MasterView Issue #5, art. 2)
** TIP **
when using the Hyperlink feature, you can add your custom "Screen
Tip". What is a "Screen Tip"? A "Screen Tip" is
that small yellow label that appears any time you hover your mouse on top
of any icon in any Windows-based application (also called
"ToolTip": it is the same yellow label that shows you a
description of the content of any hyperlink in a Web page or Web-style
formatted document).
You can customize this Screen Tip with your own text: for any hyperlink
you decide to insert, you will be able to provide your custom yellow
label, which will automatically display any time the mouse moves on top of
a linked object.
To do so, click at the top of the Hyperlink windows where it says:
"Screen Tip" and type your test. To test it, remember to switch
to "Slide Show View" mode (F5 with PowerPoint 2000). You will
see that, as soon as you stop your mouse over the hyperlinked object, a
Screen Tip will appear with the message you have previously typed.
The pros of using "Action Settings" are:
* You can decide whether to apply the action to the mouse click or to
the mouse over. In this case, you will not need to click on the object,
but as soon as your mouse will move on top of the linked object, the link
will automatically redirect you to the specified slide.
* You can easily decide to run any other program (a movie clip, a .wav
file, a flash animation, an mp3 file or anything else).
* You can play a sound browsing from Microsoft sounds (applause,
breaking glass, camera, cash register) or choosing any other sound file
you have saved in your hard disk.
To do this, simply put the tick mark where it says: Play a sound and
browse the drop down list to select the one you want.
My personal opinion is, though, to be extremely cautious when dealing with
sounds in a presentation.
* Under the "Hyperlink to:" drop-down list, you can choose
among actions that are not present among the options in the Hyperlink box.
I am referring to: "Next Slide", "Previous Slide",
"First Slide", "Last Slide", "Last Viewed
Slide", "End Show", "Slide" (by using this one,
you can select any of the other slides in the same presentation),
"Custom Show". Using these settings, you have more options to
create relative links (not absolute, but relative to any slide you
choose).
Finally, you can decide to "Highlight" your mouse click or
your mouse over, so that the object will kind of flash changing color when
you click on it.
*Tip: if you decide to use the "Action Setting" box and still
want to hyperlink an object to an e-mail address, do the following:
1) In the "Action Settings" box, click on "Hyperlink
to:"
2) Choose "URL"
3) Type, without quotation marks and without spaces: "mailto:name@domain.com",
where you will substitute this generic e-mail address with a real one.
4) Click "OK" and the hyperlink is ready.
If you want to remove the hyperlinks, just follow these simple
instructions:
1) You can right-click on a linked object, choose "Action
Settings" and click on "None" in the relevant tab (either
on the mouse click, or on the mouse over tab).
2) Then click "OK" and the hyperlink will disappear.
or
1) Right-click on the object (if you have PowerPoint 2000) or click on
"Insert"
2) Select "Hyperlink"
3) Choose "Remove hyperlink"
Done!
Don't forget to have a look also at my previous article dealing with
hyperlinks: "Master how you can link any Web page, Word document or
other application file to any slide in your presentation". You can
find it at MasterView Issue #4, art. 4.
Now that we know some pros and cons, and main differences, between the
"Hyperlink" dialog box and the "Action Settings", let
me show you in detail what you can do to improve your presentation.
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
