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 the 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
a specific slide and that's the Topics slide.
Click OK, and go back to the Slide Master tab to 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. What a fantastic
way to make your presentation fun and easy to navigate!