Action buttons are a lot like hyperlinks in PowerPoint. They can be used to connect to another slide,
file, email address, or web page, except they give you a button to click instead of a link.
The buttons are actually built-in shapes that can be found on the Insert tab - on the same
menu as the rest of the Shapes. You'll find them at the very bottom in a section of their
own.
Because action buttons are so easy to understand, they're especially useful for self-running
presentations. I plan to leave this presentation up for an entire afternoon, so new employees
can re-watch it if they need to, or go back to review a specific slide.
A few of the action buttons should be familiar to you from browsing the internet, like Home,
Back, and Next. To insert one, click to select it, then draw the shape where you want it
on your slide.
Now we can define the settings for the action button. I'm going to leave this one as is,
which means it'll hyperlink to the next slide when the user clicks it, basically starting
the presentation. Click OK to save and close the window.
To go back and edit the button, all you have to do is click the Action command. Why don't
we go to the Mouse Over tab this time, and add a sound that'll play as soon as the user
mouses over the button, before they even click it.
You can also customize the way the action button looks by going to the Format tab. Remember,
it's just a shape, so you can change everything from the color and style to the shape itself.
You don't even have to use one of the predefined action buttons.
I have something else in mind for the rest of my presentation. It involves this list
of topics (sort of like a home page), and an action button that users can click to come
back here any time, no matter what slide they're on. To add this special button to every slide,
we're going to go to the View tab first, where we can switch to Slide Master.
Now select the first one on the list, and continue to the Insert tab to follow the same
steps as before.
Why don't we use the Home button this time?
Instead of hyperlinking to the first slide, which is the title slide, I want to link to
the Topics slide. So I’ll select Slide… and then click the one I want to link to.
Now you may have noticed that the home button isn’t appearing on some of the layout slides,
but there’s an easy way to fix that. Just uncheck Hide Background Graphics.
Depending on what theme you’re using, you may need to tweak a few things in the slide
master view to get all of your slides looking the way you want.
When you’re finished Close the Master View. Now our little action button to return Home
appears on every slide. Let's check it out in Slide Show View to see how it all comes
together.
There's that drum roll, triggered when I mouse over the button. It takes us to the next slide
like it's supposed to and the Home button appears to be working too. Adding Action Buttons
to your slides is a fantastic way to make your presentation fun and easy to navigate.